Why shouldn't B have standing? They presumably are residents of and taxpayers to city C, and they face property devaluation stemming from nearby municipal actions.

So there are two issues: (c) shouldn't be able to sell without the restriction, and (b) knowing of the restriction made decisions in good faith believing it would be followed and hence have been harmed by it not being followed, no? If (b) doesn't have standing, nobody does and deed restrictions are de facto useless.

"standing" is a made-up concept with a fairly short history. Remember how we look back at the early part of the 20th century as being filled with virtuous people at every level of industry and govt? me neither:

The modern U.S. doctrine of standing traces back to mid-20th-century Supreme Court cases that crystallized the “injury in fact,” causation, and redressability triad, but its roots lie in early 20th-century rulings such as Fairchild v. Hughes (1920) that first linked federal judicial power to a plaintiff’s concrete injury.

B doesn't have standing because they are indirectly harmed? So if I sell a home in an HOA without the HOA covenant on the deed, can the HOA sue? It seems they are also only indirectly harmed.

In which case C should be held culpable for the violation of the terms from A. As the condition of the sale. B should not sue D, but C. Try to get an A witness.

But that is how deed restrictions are enforced. If you didn't have that mechanism, then they would just not exist upon death, etc.

I wouldn't call a community member some random person.

It is exactly same like when OEM will make you sign agreement that you won't try to reverse engineer the car, but if you will flip it without the restriction, then all is clear.

Please tell me how I can just strip deed restrictions simply because I don't like them and/or they're inconvenient for me.

Deed restrictions are the mechanism that basically all HOAs are built upon so if you can just skirt around them because $reasons there are millions of people who would like to know.

B should have standing from the park designation creating a public easement. I'm guessing the deed restrictions are pretty thin, and that pages++ of legalese would have done a better job. But this is the exact dynamic that everyone (rightly) hates attorneys for, both on the giving side ($$$ to hire an attorney to copypasta all that crap), as well as on the receiving side (pages of legalese are bound to create a bunch of extra facets to be dealt with by both the city and residents). Rather than the same rough type of structure needing to be reinvented over and over out of common law cloth, we really need reform aimed at defining commonly understood constructs that can simply be instantiated by reference.

What you're describing sounds like what we call "in current use" in New Hampshire. I know Maine has something similar but I can't remember what they call it.

You don't pay taxes on land in current use, but, if you or whomever you sold the land to, wants to build on it, they have to pay the back taxes first. It's a great for conservation.

seems like this behavior would have a chilling effect on deathbed donations, especially when it sends the message gives: "screw you, we'll do what we want"

I also don't see how this behavior is in the public good, even if the donor has some ulterior motive, governments are free to reject donations

Yeah at that point it should be in a perpetual trust or some other holding co who can fend off the city. Never trust your neighbors with your stuff.

This one leads to some very odd lawsuits.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/06/24/corner-cros...

The law addressed this centuries ago. The general rule is that you can enforce such rules for a generation plus twenty years. That may seem like a long time, but the rule prevents the "cold hand from the grave" dictating how living people should act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

In this case, the farmer should have talked to a lawyer first. There are ways to set thing up to prevent misuse.

>There is a tax loophole where you buy a lot of land and donate 90% of it to the government to be "public parkland". However, in actuality, you're the only person who has convenient access to this land

While I'm sure that's happened once or twice and serves as great fodder to get people of a certain ideological bent riled up, for the most part nobody is giving government land that's worth a shit. They're doing it to land that's effectively unusable due to regulation. Like if you own a strip that's a many acre 30ft wide along a steep river bank plus some space for a house (the lot layout could be the result of an old railroad or industrial thing) you gain literally nothing being on the hook for all that and you can't use it. That sort of thing is the typical case in which these sorts of things are invoked. It's more of a "well if you jerks care so much about what I do with it you can have it" type deal than a tax dodge.

Public parks should not be developed on for the sake of the community. We need wild areas.

> I don't think you should be able to block development on land you donated indefinitely.

On land you contractually purchased with the condition that development be blocked indefinitely? Then why sign the contract? If they wanted a time limit, they could have put it in the contract, or not signed the contract.

There's lots of places that give 99 year leases for obscenely small amounts like $10. The neighborhood church near where I grew up owned way more land than it currently used. They "leased" the land to farmer/ranchers to grow hay in part of it and graze animals in other parts. It was leased with similarly friendly terms if not the 99 year lease.

These things are more common that people might expect. Not everyone is a lawyer-esque asshole, but that does open situations up to disagreements where people respond with "should have talked to a lawyer"

Not a lawyer but my understanding is that a valid contract must involve an exchange of value from both parties

Even more bizarre, the $10 cash never changes hands.

At today's rate in the US, executive immunity is going to extend to all elected or appointed officials in perpetuity.

Politicians are just foot soldiers/weeds in this game. Pluck one corrupt politician. 2 more grow in its place.

I would like the billionaires to be jailed, their political pawns in government removed from office, Citizens United to be nullified, FEC regulations re-worked from ground up, and codified.

Citizens used to hold leadership responsible.

It wasn’t even that long ago.

Now, for a certain class, theft and rape are hardly a risk.

My guess is standing. The family bringing the suit is not the family that donated the land.

I've been trying to find this out. I suspect it was dismissed because they lacked standing. Because there were a bunch of transfer, likely only the last seller has standing to sue for ignoring a deed restriction and of course they don't care.

That's not absolute. There can be other cases where you have standing even if you aren't involved in the transaction but those cases are limited.

Now it's also possible that the deed wasn't properly recorded. If it was, there might be more people who have standing, such as those near the project who are negatively impacted. It's possible that the district court erred or maybe the people bringing suit didn't live in the area or otherwise have standing.

It does seem wrong that you can effectively invalidate a deed restriction by simply selling it enough times.

The land has changed hands a few times since it was deeded to the county. They're sueing the entity that sold it to the people developing the data center.

Step 1: Have a stated cause or known interest

(Most people struggle to reach this step)

I consider easements only valid when in use, or 5 years. That is once you build the "thing" you get to keep the easement, but if you stop using that pipe/cable/... you get 5 years to clean it up. If you are planning on building, you get 5 years to complete it, otherwise you have to start over getting another easement.

Maybe. Many are forever. If the restriction is a via HOA there is generally a process to modify the HOA agreement. However there are other restrictions and some don't make provisions.

Possibly... there is a lot of unknown details here. The article posted appears to be rage bait rather than a well researched article.

Thanks, I actually just found that article- and it gives a completely different view of events than the posted article. For one, it says the suit was from a group of residents, not the family who donated the land.

This may be a stupid question... do cities need to pay state property tax on properties they own?

> The land trust you work with - are they accredited with LTA?

They are. Great comment, I could not agree more with your thoughts.

Entirely possible, I will have to read the deed and legal filings to speak authoritatively vs a hot take. Sometimes we trust the wrong people, which is a potential lesson in stronger controls and guardrails legally in this context.

I think your quote is incorrect. I haven't seen that the family has done anything since the donation. It was unrelated neighbors who sued.