absolute power of ownership

After Wisconsin became a State, the legislature projected a system of improving the navigation of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. This system adopted the dam of Reid and Doty, then in process of construction, as part of that system. Under that act, a board of public works was established. The board made such arrangements with Reid and Doty that they continued and completed the dam. By subsequent legislation, the defendants finally became the owners of the dam with such powers concerning the improvement of the navigation of the river as the legislature could confer in that regard. The land of the plaintiff came to him through a reservation in an Indian treaty in favor of one Therese Pacquett. She received a patent from the United States in 1849. The dam was completed to its present height in 1852. By reason of the dam, the water of the lake was so raised as to cause it to overflow all his land. The overflow remained continuously from the completion of the dam in the year 1861 to the commencement of the suit in the year 1867. The nature of the injuries set out in the declaration are such as show that it worked an almost complete destruction of the value of the land. The second plea alleges that the legislature authorized the erection of the dam as it now stands without any provision for compensating the plaintiff for the injury. The fourth plea avers that the defendants have ever since had, used, and enjoyed the easement of overflowing the plaintiff's lands with his acquiescence. They had done this under color of right. The sixth plea avers that the land of the plaintiff came to him through a reservation in an Indian treaty. This title came to the plaintiff burdened with an easement in favor of improving the navigation of the Fox River which authorized the injuries complained of. The matter came before the Supreme Court after proceedings in the lower court.

Duncan Hannah, a lance-corporal in the Royal Artillery, was stationed at Gwernhaylod House in Overton-on-Dee, Shropshire, in August 1940. The house had been conveyed to the defendant Hugh Edmund Ethelston Peel on 13 December 1938, but Peel never occupied it, as it was requisitioned under the Defence Regulations on 5 October 1939, released after some months, and requisitioned again on 16 July 1940, for which Peel received £250 a year in compensation. On 21 August 1940, while occupying an upstairs room in the house being used as a sick bay, Hannah was adjusting the blackout curtains when his hand touched something loose that he thought to be a piece of dirt or plaster. He picked it up and dropped it outside the window on to the window-ledge. The next morning in daylight he found that the object was a brooch covered with spider's web and dirt. At the end of October 1940, after cleaning the brooch and showing it to his wife, Hannah consulted Major Lawrie, his commanding officer, and on his advice the brooch was handed by Major Lawrie on behalf of the plaintiff to Sergeant Blodwell Williams of the Flintshire police at the Overton police station, for which a receipt was given. In a letter of 22 November 1941, the agents for the defendant asserted their claim, stating that on the assumption that the brooch was in the wall crevice when Major Peel purchased the house, the brooch is Major Peel's property. The defendant offered the brooch to Spink & Son Ltd, who offered £60 and later raised that to £66, and they themselves sold the brooch for £88. The plaintiff claimed the return of the brooch or its value on the ground that he was the finder, while the defendant denied the plaintiff's right and pleaded that as freeholder his title was superior.

The City of Chicago, acting under an 1872 Illinois statute that became part of its charter in 1875, passed an ordinance on October 9, 1880, to open and widen Rockwell Street from West 18th Street to West 19th Street by condemning parcels of land owned by individuals and parts of the right of way of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company within the city limits. On November 12, 1890, the city filed a petition in the Circuit Court of Cook County seeking condemnation of the property and asking that just compensation be ascertained by a jury, with the railroad company admitted as a defendant along with other interested parties. The jury awarded one dollar as just compensation to the railroad company for the parts of its right of way to be used for the street, while awarding compensation to individual owners for their parcels. The railroad moved for a new trial, which was overruled, and final judgment was entered in execution of the award. The judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Illinois in 149 Illinois 457. After affirmance the railroad company sued out a writ of error to the United States Supreme Court. The railroad had raised claims under the Fourteenth Amendment in its motion for new trial and in its assignment of errors filed in the state supreme court. The Illinois statute provided no provision for an answer by defendants in condemnation proceedings, but the railroad asserted its federal claims in the written motion to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial.

In 1986, petitioner David H. Lucas purchased two residential lots on the Isle of Palms in Charleston County, South Carolina, for $975,000. He intended to construct single-family homes on the parcels, which at the time were zoned for such use and required no building permit for development. No portion of the lots qualified as a critical area under then-existing coastal zone legislation. Subsequently, in 1988, the South Carolina Legislature enacted the Beachfront Management Act. The legislation established a baseline and prohibited construction of occupable improvements seaward of a line drawn 20 feet landward of that baseline, directly affecting Lucas's parcels by barring any permanent habitable structures. Lucas filed an action in the Court of Common Pleas alleging that the Act's restrictions effected a taking of his property without just compensation. Following a bench trial, the court determined that the prohibition rendered the lots valueless and ordered the state to pay just compensation in the amount of $1,232,387.50. The Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed the trial court's judgment. It accepted the legislature's findings that new construction threatened public resources and concluded that a regulation designed to prevent serious public harm could not constitute a taking. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the South Carolina Supreme Court's decision.