An Oregon family is asking the nation’s highest bench to let them pursue a property rights challenge against the U.S. government after lower courts said they waited too long to sue.
The case, backed by the Supreme Court powerhouse Pacific Legal Foundation, centers on how courts interpret a law that gives landowners 12 years to sue after the federal government intrudes on their property rights. The key question in the fight is when that clock starts.
Chinook Landing v. United States asks the justices to review a case involving the estate of John Lund, a late Tillamook County resident who purchased his parcel of land in northwest Oregon in 2004, long after the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) built transmission lines there under a 1955 easement from a previous owner.
Lower courts have ruled that too much time has passed for Lund’s estate, Chinook Landing, to challenge BPA’s use of a private road cutting through the property decades after the original easement was made. The agreement allowed the agency to construct and maintain its power lines but did not give the right to use the road, according to Lund’s lawyers.
