Justia Real Estate & Property Law Opinion Summaries

The case involves an ancillary proceeding under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.2(c) and 21 U.S.C. § 853(n). Jesse Dunn filed a third-party petition claiming ownership of a parcel of land in West Jordan, Utah, which the government sought to forfeit in Justin Peck’s criminal case. Peck was convicted of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The government alleged Peck held an ownership interest in the land. The district court agreed with Dunn and blocked the forfeiture, leading to the government's appeal.The United States District Court for the District of Utah initially found the land forfeitable based on Peck’s plea agreement. However, during the ancillary proceeding, the district court determined that Dunn had a superior interest in the property. Dunn had purchased the land with untainted funds and later paid off a loan using funds authorized by Peck. The court found that Dunn’s interest in the property was superior to Peck’s at all relevant times under Utah law.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reviewed the case. The court affirmed the district court’s decision, holding that Dunn’s interest in the property was superior to Peck’s and the government’s under 21 U.S.C. § 853(n)(6)(A). The court noted that the government had only sought to forfeit the land and had not pursued other potentially forfeitable property or substitute property. The court also emphasized that the government did not challenge the district court’s findings under Utah law, which governed the determination of property interests in federal forfeiture proceedings. The Tenth Circuit concluded that the district court correctly vacated the preliminary forfeiture order and granted Dunn’s third-party petition. View "United States v. Peck" on Justia Law

David Knellinger and Robert Storey discovered that the state of Colorado had taken possession of their property under the Revised Uniform Unclaimed Property Act (RUUPA). They filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that Colorado's unclaimed property scheme violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The plaintiffs alleged that Colorado took their property for public use without just compensation and did not provide them with notice or compensation.The United States District Court for the District of Colorado dismissed the plaintiffs' claims for lack of standing. The court found that Knellinger and Storey failed to sufficiently allege ownership of the property at issue, partly because they did not file an administrative claim to establish ownership as required by RUUPA. The district court also dismissed the plaintiffs' equitable claims, concluding that § 1983 provided an adequate basis for obtaining just compensation.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reviewed the case and determined that the district court erred in dismissing the plaintiffs' claims for monetary relief. The appellate court held that Knellinger and Storey had plausibly alleged that Colorado took their property for public use without just compensation, which is sufficient to confer standing. The court emphasized that property owners need not file administrative claims with Colorado before suing for just compensation under the Takings Clause. However, the appellate court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the plaintiffs' equitable claims, as § 1983 provides an adequate remedy for obtaining just compensation.The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal of the plaintiffs' damages claims and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. View "Knellinger v. Young" on Justia Law

Iron Bar Holdings, LLC, a private landowner in Wyoming, owns a checkerboarded ranch interspersed with federal and state public lands. The only way to access these public lands, other than by aircraft, is by corner-crossing, which involves stepping from one public parcel to another at their adjoining corners without touching the private land in between. In 2020 and 2021, a group of hunters from Missouri corner-crossed to hunt elk on the public lands within Iron Bar's ranch. Iron Bar's property manager confronted the hunters, and law enforcement was contacted, but no citations were issued. In 2021, the hunters were prosecuted for criminal trespass but were acquitted. Iron Bar then filed a civil lawsuit for trespassing, seeking $9 million in damages.The United States District Court for the District of Wyoming granted summary judgment in favor of the hunters, holding that corner-crossing without physically contacting private land and without causing damage does not constitute unlawful trespass. Iron Bar Holdings appealed the decision.The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reviewed the case. The court held that while Wyoming law recognizes a property owner's right to exclude others from their airspace, federal law, specifically the Unlawful Inclosures Act (UIA) of 1885, overrides state law in this context. The UIA prohibits any inclosure of public lands that obstructs free passage or transit over them. The court found that Iron Bar's actions effectively enclosed public lands and prevented lawful access, which is prohibited by the UIA. The court affirmed the district court's decision, allowing the hunters to corner-cross as long as they did not physically touch Iron Bar's land. View "Iron Bar Holdings v. Cape" on Justia Law

Unable to win the consent of all necessary landowners, a public utility company contended it had a statutory right to condemn a right-of-way on two parcels of land in New Mexico. Because federal law did not permit condemnation of tribal land, the Navajo Nation’s ownership of undivided fractional interests in the parcels presented a problem for the company. The Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the condemnation action against the two land parcels in which the Navajo Nation held an interest. View "Public Service Company of NM v. Barboan" on Justia Law

This case involved a dispute over the ownership of mineral rights appurtenant to several tracts of land located in Haskell County, Kansas. Michael Leathers and his brother Ronald Leathers each inherited half of these mineral rights from their mother. But an error in a quit claim deed subsequently executed between the brothers left it unclear whether Ronald’s one-half interest in the mineral estate had been conveyed to Michael. In a series of orders spanning several years, the district court (1) reformed the quit claim deed to reflect that Ronald had reserved his one-half interest in the mineral estate; (2) awarded half of Ronald’s one-half interest to Ronald’s wife Theresa (pursuant to Ronald and Theresa’s divorce decree); and (3) held that Ronald owed approximately $1.5 million to the IRS and that the IRS’s tax liens had first priority to any present and future royalties due to Ronald from his remaining one-quarter mineral interest. Ronald appealed, but finding no reversible error in the district court’s judgment with respect to the reformation and the interests, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court on all grounds. View "Leathers v. Leathers" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs-Appellants, a certified class of Osage tribal members who owned headrights, appealed the district court’s accounting order. Plaintiffs alleged that the government was improperly distributing royalties to non-Osage tribal members, which diluted the royalties for the Osage tribal members, the rightful headright owners. The complaint attributed this misdistribution to the government’s mismanagement of the trust assets and the government’s failure to perform an accounting. Thus, Plaintiffs sought to compel the government to perform an accounting and to prospectively restrict royalty payments to Osage tribal members and their heirs. The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ accounting claim because it found that the applicable statute only required the government to account for deposits, not withdrawals, and that such an accounting would not support Plaintiffs’ misdistribution claim. After review, the Tenth Circuit could not say the district court abused its discretion. "The accounting the district court fashioned will certainly inform Plaintiffs of the trust receipts and disbursements and to whom those disbursements were made." View "Fletcher v. United States" on Justia Law

VR Acquisitions, LLC (VRA) owned a roughly 6,700-acre property in Utah’s Jordanelle Basin. VRA brought this action in 2015, asserting three federal constitutional claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983 and five state-law claims. All claims rested, to some degree, on VRA’s assertion that an invalid assessment lien was recorded against the property three years before VRA bought the property. The district court dismissed all eight claims with prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), and VRA appealed. Because the district court properly dismissed VRA’s section 1983 claims for lack of prudential standing, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of those claims with prejudice. But because the district court should have declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over VRA’s state-law claims, the Tenth Circuit reversed its dismissal with prejudice of those claims and remanded with directions for the district court to dismiss those claims without prejudice. View "VR Acquisitions v. Wasatch County" on Justia Law

People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners (“PETPO”) challenged a regulation promulgated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) pursuant to the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The challenged regulation prohibited the “take” of the Utah prairie dog, a purely intrastate species, on nonfederal land. The ESA defined “take” as meaning “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect.” The district court granted summary judgment for PETPO on the ground that neither the Commerce Clause nor the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution authorized Congress to regulate take of the Utah prairie dog on nonfederal land. FWS and intervenor-defendant Friends of Animals (“FoA”) appealed the grant of summary judgment, arguing that the challenged regulation was authorized by both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, and that PETPO lacked standing. After its review, the Tenth Circuit held that the district court correctly concluded that PETPO had standing, but erred in concluding that Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate (and authorize the Service to regulate) the take of the Utah prairie dog. View "People for Ethical Treatment v. U.S. Fish & Wildlife" on Justia Law

Plaintiff owned property traversed by Red Hill Road, which was used by the public to access White Peak, a popular hunting and wildlife area in northern New Mexico. Believing the road to be private, Plaintiff installed a cattle guard, locked gate, and barbed-wire fence to prevent access to his land. Believing the road to be a public right-of-way, Defendant (a district attorney) wrote to Plaintiff on August 3, 2011, demanding that the gate be removed. The next week Plaintiff filed a still-pending quiet-title action in state court to determine whether the road is private or public. After three weeks with no response from Plaintiff, Defendant took matters into his own hands. Accompanied by a former president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, four deputy sheriffs, and 18 private persons, Defendant cut the lock on the gate and, with the help of others, removed the barbed wire and T-posts from the road. When Defendant learned a few weeks later that Plaintiff had locked the gate a second time, Defendant directed the local sheriff to cut the lock and chain on the gate. This case presented an issue of first impression in the Tenth Circuit. The violation of federal law was not clearly established, but under state law, the action was unauthorized. A question of whether a public officer loses the protection of qualified immunity when he acts outside the scope of his authority was presented by the facts of this case: is there any justification for granting immunity in that context? The district court endorsed a “scope-of-authority” exception to qualified immunity and ruled that Defendant Donald Gallegos, a district attorney, had clearly acted without state-law authority in forcibly removing a barrier that Plaintiff David Stanley had placed on a road to prevent traffic through his property. It therefore held that Defendant could not invoke the protection of qualified immunity. The Tenth Circuit reversed and remanded for the district court to consider whether Defendant violated clearly established federal law or was instead entitled to qualified immunity. View "Stanley v. Gallegos" on Justia Law

This appeal grew out of a battle over Winter, a horse that belonged to Summer Colby. Colby and her mother grew estranged and argued over who owned Winter. The mother allegedly complained to the Colorado Department of Agriculture, which responded by sending someone from the Brand Inspection Division to investigate. After investigating, the inspector seized the horse, prompting Colby and her mother to take the matter to court over ownership. After almost three years, Colby prevailed and got her horse back. When the horse was returned to Colby, she and her husband sued the Division and two of its officers, but the district court dismissed the action. The Colbys appealed, raising issues involving the Eleventh Amendment and the statute of limitations. After review, the Tenth Circuit concluded that the district court properly dismissed all of the claims. View "Colby v. Herrick" on Justia Law