Taking Nevada

Over the past several years, a number of high profile eminent domain actions have advanced “novel” legal theories. That is to say that the cases involved claims by landowners where there are either no or few precedents.

Generally, when a trial court allows a novel theory of liability to survive a motion to dismiss, the party seeking to end the case can ask the Nevada Supreme Court to intervene through an “extraordinary writ petition.” Extraordinary does not mean “super awesome”, it simply means “out of the ordinary course of law”.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve observed a general trend of the Nevada Supreme Court declining to terminate novel cases at earlier proceedings, choosing instead to let them play out. The Court seems to be keeping that trend consistent, as it recently denied the City of Las Vegas’ writ petition seeking to end a claim by the new developer of the Badlands’ golf course who was seeking to obtain just compensation for inverse condemnation based on the City’s denial of his efforts to redevelop the course into housing.

This trend is troubling to municipalities, because even if they ultimately succeed in the case (like in Buzz Stew and Fritz), they must spend significant resources in either staff time or in actual money to private counsel to litigate these claims through trial.

I’m curious whether this tendency of the Nevada Supreme Court to deny writ review will be a long term trend, or whether we’ve just had a rash of cases that the Court has chosen not to review.