Mike represents public companies and smaller, privately-owned businesses and local governments in federal and state court litigation, as well as in land use and real estate development and entitlement negotiations, processes, and disputes. Mike has experience litigating throughout the United States but focuses his practice on land use, real estate and local government issues and solutions in North Carolina.
An interesting “development” – so to speak – took place recently as to a quasi-judicial board’s obligations with regard to special and conditional use permits. The case is PHG Asheville, LLC v. City of Asheville, No. COA18-251 (November 6, 2018). A developer proposed to build an eight-story, 178,412 […]
Today, we look at the North Carolina Court of Appeals’ recent analysis in Nationstar Mortgage, LLC v. Curry, et al., COA18-351 (November 6, 2018) regarding whether a secured lender is actually a party to a proceeding. A landowner obtained a loan, secured by the property, from Sidus Financial, […]
Any stock brokerage website will tell you that “past performance is not indicative of future results.” The same is true in the context of land use permitting, such that what a municipality “had done” cannot ripen a claim to prevent against what a municipality “might do.”
We spend a lot of time in this space talking about land use ordinances. But what about the tools deployed in the event of a violation of those ordinances? State law provides that municipal and county governments may avail of different remedies in the enforcement of local ordinances, including (and our focus) land use ordinances.
This time, we’ll spend some energy discussing the most common (and legally charged) aspect of nonconformity laws: how local laws restrict grandfathered nonconforming structures, lots, or uses while allowing the nonconformity to continue.
Aaron Frank
Amy C. O'Neal
John Cooke
Michael Thelen
WBD Admin
North Carolina Land Use Litigator 