The Supreme Court has thwarted an Oregon family’s pursuit of a property rights lawsuit against a federal agency whose power lines run across their land.
In a short, unexplained order issued Tuesday, the justices declined to take up the landowners’ petition, Chinook Landing v. United States. The case, backed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, had asked the justices to reverse a lower court’s finding that the estate of John Lund was time-barred from launching its challenge against the federal government.
Under the Quiet Title Act, landowners have 12 years to sue the government after it intrudes on their property rights. The central argument in Chinook Landing was that lower courts had wrongly determined when that clock started ticking.
Before Lund purchased his property in northwest Oregon in 2004, the Bonneville Power Administration, or BPA, had built transmission lines on the land under a 1955 easement from a prior owner.
