The Supreme Court on Monday granted a petition from North Dakota landowners asking the justices to weigh in on how much compensation companies owe for using eminent domain to take land to build natural gas pipelines.
The landowners are seeking to overturn a March 2025 ruling finding that they were not entitled to compensation for legal fees and other costs associated with determining how much WBI Energy Transmission owed them for taking their land to build a 12-mile gas pipeline in northwestern North Dakota.
After the justices sought his input on the case, Solicitor General D. John Sauer also argued the high court should hear the case, Leonard Hoffman v. WBI Energy Transmission, but said the justices should uphold the decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in order to resolve a split with other appellate courts.
The 8th Circuit ruled that the Natural Gas Act did not explicitly allow compensation for additional legal fees and that the landowners in the case were not entitled to compensation for that expense.
This is in contrast to other federal laws, which do require coverage for attorneys fees for federal takings, the court ruled.
The 8th Circuit decision overturned a ruling from a lower bench, which granted the landowners more than $383,000 in attorneys’ fees. The district court had held that because federal law did not explicitly mention legal fees, then state law could be applied to determine an amount owed to the landowners.
