Virginia farmer Martha Boneta has reached a settlement in her $2 million lawsuit against a husband-and-wife team of realtors whom she accused of colluding with an environmental group to drive her off her land.
Efforts by county officials in the Florida Panhandle to undermine both the property rights and the First Amendment rights of owners of a beachfront home came to naught March 23 when Gov. Rick Scott signed a law reaffirming key foundations of the U.S. Constitution.
The children of a Korean War veteran and his wife are hoping to realize the dream of their late parents and build a home in the Florida Keys, thereby undoing a government “taking” of the family’s property.
Martha Boneta: “It is my hope and prayer that no American citizen ever has to suffer the way we have on our family farm.”
They didn’t expect Virginia property owners directly affected by the pipeline to show up, advocating for their rights. The property owners’ message was simple: “Pipeline yes, eminent domain no.”
Many states have right-to-farm statutes, but right-to-farm constitutional amendments are something new.
Some 500 families were relocated 80 years ago when the federal government used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create Shenandoah National Park. Today, a private company is seeking to use eminent domain (despite having an alternate route) to destroy farmland and displace or negatively impact about 2,700 families. There is a better way.
South Carolina and Georgia blocked pipelines when companies sought to intrude on private land via eminent domain. Will Virginians revolt over the Dominion pipeline?
The joy of owning beachfront property has become a nightmare for a North Carolina family embroiled in a nasty dispute with a local government intent on engaging is some old-fashioned land-grabbing.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the North Dakota-based Hawkes Co., which had planned to mine peat from property in Minnesota, could challenge in court a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) ruling declaring the property counted as “regulated wetlands” without first having to go through the costly process necessary to obtain a permit to disturb wetlands.
Martha Boneta’s lawsuit against the Piedmont Environmental Council, filed in May, argues that the organization’s linking of Jackson to her property was not just a mistake but a deliberate act of fraud.
Landowners throughout the nation will soon learn whether they have the right to challenge in court decisions by federal agencies asserting jurisdiction over what the feds say are “wetlands” on their property.