A Florida appellate court clarified the state’s interpretation of a question that the U.S. Supreme Court has been grappling with for more than a century: At what point does regulatory taking go from harm prevention to a backdoor way of taking property, while avoiding the payment of just compensation?
Robert H. Thomas, the property rights litigation director at the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, California, represented the plaintiff, Rodney Shands and his siblings, the owners of an offshore island in the Florida Keys that the defendant, the City of Marathon, allegedly took for around 5% of the property’s value.
Robert H. Thomas of Pacific Legal Foundation. (Courtesy photo)
