Eminent Domain

EMINENT DOMAIN (or condemnation) is the power to take private property for a necessary public purpose. Federal, state, and local governments and their agencies, and certain public utilities, have the power to condemn private property. 

Governments can exercise this power directly by filing a lawsuit to take property. Governments can also take or damage property indirectly – by over-regulating it or when creation of a public project such as a street causes physical damage to neighboring property.

Inverse Condemnation

Government activities may result in the taking of private property even though there is no formal condemnation.

New government rules and regulations, for example, may interfere with the productive use of private property. This interference may constitute a taking in which just compensation must be paid.

In these cases, the property owner usually has to sue the offending authority for "inverse condemnation."

Over the last thirty years, regulatory agencies empowered by the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, and new governmental agencies like the California Coastal Commission, have sought to control development at the expense of individual landowners.

To those persons whose property is seized by eminent domain, the U.S. Constitution says "just compensation" must be paid. But like many rights illuminated by the Constitution, the right to just compensation is often ensured only through litigation.

Craig M. Collins has battled against government overreaching by assuring that landowners are justly compensated.  Read about some of the cases that Mr. Collins has handled.