In Manatt Appellate Senior Counsel Michael Berger’s most recent column for Daily Journal, he examined a case in which Trinity East Energy claimed the City of Dallas violated the constitution by taking its property without compensation after the energy company was denied a natural gas drilling permit by the city.
Berger explained that after Trinity East entered into a lease agreement that would allow the company to drill for gas on city-owned property, the city delayed consideration of the special use permits until the lease expired, causing the value of the lease to fall as there was no economically beneficial or productive use that Trinity could make. “The economic impact on the property owner was enormous. The trial court found that the value before the city’s permit denial was $33,639,000 and the value after the denial was zero,” Berger noted.
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