Posted on 06/30/2014 12:03:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a popular oyster farm in Northern California that is facing closure.
The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place lower court rulings against Drakes Bay Oyster Co.
The company operates in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to renew its lease when it expired in 2012. Salazar said the waters of Drakes Estero should be returned to wilderness status.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcbayarea.com ...
SCOTUS is a crap shoot. They get a lot wrong too.
This is as good as it’s going to get. There will never be another new conservative justice put on the court.
Not good. Even some enviros don’t agree with what’s happening to them.
What’s even more outrageous is that the surrounding land used to belong to the company, and they donated it to the Feds with a lease back, that they were assured would be renewed. Then Salazar decided not to renew. Never trust the government.
Very sad. A legitimate business for many years, not harming the environment. This country is SO f’d up.
I call BS on that. Provide sources.
The case was cut and dry and the outcome inevitable — unless some bribery or other undue influence were to be applied.
This was the correct decision. It was a plain and simple contract law. A lease with an option to extend. Option denied case closed, move on.
I plaintiffs imagined they were entitled to an extension and that the U.S government didn’t have any rights unto itself and therefore couldn’t refuse.
I wish the owners well and hope they’ve made sufficient funds to support them through their next endeavors.
If you don’t own the land, when the lease expires you loose your rights.
Sad, but that is why I would never run a business on government land.
If you were a western state rancher you would be forced to use leased government land, or quit ranching.
I take it that you don’t live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not living here, or not residing here for very long would make it easy to take the cut and dried, antiseptic view, based one’s conclusions predominately on the weight and balance of present laws. Little by little, the Government continues to remove more formerly private owned land out of the citizen’s control. Some people prefer it that way, trusting Uncle Sam to be the best steward and manager for any and all open lands.
Does Findlaw work as a source for you?
(Note: The Current Drakes Bay Oyster Company is a successor of the original Johnson Oyster company. Partners or employees of the original bought it out to become DBOC)
Do you still call BS?
Well, they were not forced to use leased land, they chose to in order to save money back in the day.
That is what many of the range wars were about. When the Homestead act was passed, many ranchers were already using that land (most often for free) without owning it. They resented homesteaders coming in since they would either have to pay the new owners, homestead the surrounding land themselves, or force them out.
Many made the choice to kill the homesteaders, so they didn’t have to pay taxes on the land.
Sorry, I have family that were involved in the range wars. While I have some sympathy for those ranchers caught in it today, it was a bad practice to start with.
The Feds own most of the west. 90% of a neighboring county is Fed land.
Individuals have no chance of ever even renting it from another private individual.
History is what it is.
Todays ranchers have the choice I outlined above.
I reached the same observation today. It,s good that I,m old(er).
I think the sale and 40 yr leaseback was the alternative to an eminent domain taking.
That’s the first time I’ve seen this case described that way, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see this explanation on DU or some other such site.
This was a question about a 2009 law that extended the lease for ten years. The Executive Branch decided the law gave them the “option” to extend it for 10 years or to just ignore the law passed by Congress. Why Congress would pass a law that said the Secretary of the Interior had the same authority he had before the law was passed is beyond me. Unless, of course, they meant the law to extend the lease, in which case the Department of Interior went beyond its authority.
This was not a simple “they just decided not to extend the lease” issue. This was a “what’s a ‘Congress?’” kind of thing from the Executive Branch.
Here is a much better explanation of what was at stake.
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