4 ms·

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D.

• gfisher 5mo ago
  But that is how deed restrictions are enforced. If you didn't have that mechanism, then they would just not exist upon death, etc.
  • ortusdux 5mo ago
    Depends on the wording. "Upon X, the land shall revert to Y, or current heir" is common verbiage in deed restrictions.
• jjk166 5mo ago
  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.
  • s1artibartfast 5mo ago
    you dont have standing from indirect harm or costs.
    • waynecochran 5mo ago
      What is the legal precedent for this statement? I am not disagreeing, I just would like to know what the law is.
      • mrhottakes 5mo ago
        There isn't a single precedent; standing and jurisdiction are like 70% of civil procedure in law school. This page is a good jumping off point: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing
        • tptacek 5mo ago
          Right, standing seems like a series of technicalities until you realize it's fundamentally what keeps judges from becoming philosopher-kings that control the entire rest of the government: judges only exercise power in actual cases and controversies between formally-identified parties.
          • jfengel 5mo ago
            I find that standing makes judges philosopher-kings in collusion with the rest of the government. If they don't like the plaintiff, they reject them for not having "standing". If they do like the plaintiff, they'll find standing, no matter how thin a connection they have to rely on for it. For example, the Supreme Court case where they found standing for somebody to refuse to make a same-sex wedding web site, even though nobody had actually asked for one and the person didn't even make wedding web sites. (303 Creative v Elenis) There was no actual case. The Court invented one because they wanted the opportunity to overturn a state law, and they invented it out of whole cloth. As opposed to the case where citizens are having their votes essentially erased because of district boundaries explicitly designed to target them. They lack standing to sue over it. I have zero faith in "standing" as anything other than a tool for picking and choosing on ideological grounds, without having to address any facts of the matter.
            • gottorf 5mo ago
              > the Supreme Court case where they found standing > nobody had actually asked for one and the person didn't even make wedding web sites > There was no actual case 303 Creative v. Elenis started out because the web designer sought injunctive relief from a Colorado state law that would have made her unable to refuse to make a website for a same-sex wedding. She had received a request to make a wedding website (for a heterosexual couple), and preemptively wanted to preserve her right to refuse in light of the Colorado law and to put up a public-facing notice stating as much. The case was appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court by the designer herself. It doesn't read to me that any standing was "invented" here. Notably, the dissent in this 6-3 decision does not discuss standing at all; and in fact, the Tenth Circuit that decided against the designer (prior to the SC appeal) did find that she had standing. It sounds like you have your own personal gripes with this decision, which is fair, but an attack on the grounds that there was no standing is misguided.
    • munk-a 5mo ago
      This statement is far too vague semantically to be meaningful. It is technically correct under some extreme definitions of indirect (e.g. no affecting in any way) but if you are harmed in many inobvious manners you have recourse. In this specific example the neighbor is harmed through their property valuation - whether that will be a successful suit I cannot comment on but there is observed harm. Additionally, if a relatively forgotten homeless person is murdered and the murderer is found we still charge them - even if no individual is directly harmed by the murder happening we have a general understanding that murder is bad. Would you consider murder is bad to be a direct harm and thus skirt around the vague statement above or would you consider murder is bad to be an indirect harm and thus challenge the validity of charging someone with murder of someone without any obvious social ties? Also, if it's just some random person being murdered is the emotional distress on a family enough of a direct harm to qualify for your statement or do you think that murder (when it is not a failed attempt) is a crime for which no person has standing (aka the Telvanni way).
      • s1artibartfast 5mo ago
        If we are taking about standing to sue, we are talking civil lawsuits, not criminal law. This distinction sresolves many of your questions. Yes there are nuances, but in general I think it is a reasonable huristic. If Mcdonalds raises the price of burgers, I have more costs, but that alone is not grounds to sue Mcdonalds. If a burgler robs mcdonalds driving a price hike, that is not cause for a customer to sue the robber.
  • order-matters 5mo ago
    presumably because it's not their land and if A wanted to build a data center on it to begin with then B could do nothing about it. the key issue is C doing things that it's taxpayers dont want done. in this case though taxpayer money is not being spent, the property is being sold which means money is being generated for the taxpayers, and the new property owner is ultimately A never had the authority to contract the land as a park indefinitely and relied on C to have respect for the deal and intent. Maybe a timeframe needed to be stipulated, but even then we are talking about land ownership - once C owns it they own it. If you wanted to buy a house and the seller said something about you never being allowed to develop a section of the backyard because they buried their goldfish there or something, and you respect that wish but now need to move as well, are you stuck with passing that obligation forward? someone can just arbitrarily decide that land cannot be used? No thats why there is no standing, they have every right to use the land to better the taxpayers. the problem is not the method or authority, the problem is that people dont want to give up a park for a data center and dont see the data center as something that benefits the taxpayers. that issue is not one that should be settled by the deed. the property devaluation is a problem that should be addressed independently on its own merits and not through the means of challenging if they have the authority or not.
    • mr_00ff00 5mo ago
      This is well thought out and a good point, it does feel like though there should be some “special case” for donating land to keep for public use as a park. You are right though, how long can someone who doesn’t own that land, have authority on how it is used.
      • db48x 5mo ago
        If you want a park, then build a park. Don’t give away the land and hope someone else builds a park.
        • unholiness 5mo ago
          The Trustees of Reservations, in the Boston area, are a great example of this working well.
  • ajb 5mo ago
    Depends how it works in the jurisdiction, but in common law usually this form of restriction is like a contract, but between two pieces of land, or between a piece of land and the public, rather than between two persons. In the former case only the current owner on the benefited property can complain. In the latter case, any member of the public can - but I'm not sure if a member of the public can create such a restriction.
  • philipallstar 5mo ago
    > 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. It's extremely common. They get called NIMBYs, because they bought a property at a certain price and a low-ability local bureaucrat wants to do something that destroys that value.
  • ultrarunner 5mo ago
    They don't have standing on the deed restriction, and would have to sue for the property devaluation directly. IANAL.
    • SwellJoe 5mo ago
      That's not true. In Texas the neighbors are exactly the people who have standing to sue for deed restrictions violations.
  • CGMthrowaway 5mo ago
    In Texas, only certain parties can enforce deed restrictions, usually: The original grantor (or heirs) A property owners’ association Or someone specifically granted enforcement rights A more strongly written deed restriction would have specified a reversionary interest, wherein upon the conditions being broken, the property interest automatically springs back to the original owner. The rules of standing still apply but the sale to data center might not have ever gone through
• NDlurker 5mo ago
  I wouldn't call a community member some random person.
• Glyptodon 5mo ago
  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.
  • IG_Semmelweiss 5mo ago
    (a) has to sue and they will prevail. (b) does not have standing.
    • sleepybrett 5mo ago
      .. and if A is dead?
      • HWR_14 5mo ago
        Property rights would inherit. So one of their relatives or heirs. If they had no one to inherit the restriction it would go to the state - but the state would have gotten the land unrestricted in that case anyway.
        • deleted 5mo ago
          [deleted]
• msandford 5mo ago
  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.
  • stronglikedan 5mo ago
    > Please tell me how I can just strip deed restrictions simply because I don't like them and/or they're inconvenient for me. Easy - be a municipality. There's a reason the phrase "can't fight city hall" exists, and is for the most part universally true.
    • cogman10 5mo ago
      Yeah, city law can easily override deed laws. But further, eminent domain allows the city to strip away deed restrictions through a "one weird trick". The city can eminent domain the land from themselves removing the restriction and then sell it privately. The same way the city can eminent domain your home and put a road through it. The HOA can't stop the city from putting in a new road.
      • IAmBroom 5mo ago
        Can they do so retroactively? If they didn't declare imminent domain beforehand, I'd expect this is contract violation. But we're all guessing at Lawyer Facts(tm).
      • msandford 5mo ago
        Aren't deed restrictions usually done at the state level? If so, the city can't just magic them away. State law is going to trump city law unless the city's restrictions are tighter.
    • Avicebron 5mo ago
      So, the threat of violence (police/legal) if you complain about members of city hall lining their pockets with data center contracts.
• mindslight 5mo ago
  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.
• reactordev 5mo ago
  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.
• HWR_14 5mo ago
  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.
  • torstenvl 5mo ago
    No because the HOA represents the other members of the community who were also subject to the same CCRs.
    • HWR_14 5mo ago
      Why would that make them harmed?
      • deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
  • IAmBroom 5mo ago
    My understanding is that the HOA could sue you, presuming that they baked into your purchase contract the force of their authority. You would then have violated your contract with the HOA. I also expect that the city violated their contract with A('s heirs). B still has no standing.
• general1465 5mo ago
  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.
• fsckboy 5mo ago
  "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.
• adjejmxbdjdn 5mo ago
  Are B not part of the city? Why wouldn’t they have standing on an action by their government? (This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one).
  • zeroonetwothree 5mo ago
    Generally the idea is that if you don’t like what the government does you deal with it through politics (elections and so on). You only have standing if the government is actually directly harming you.
• BrandoElFollito 5mo ago
  I don't know how the law works in the US, but isn't the selling by C illegal and moot? C accepted the conditions, but did not repect them. Shouldn't C be attacked (legally of course) automatically? Say C decides to build on a land they own a nuclear plant with known life endengering issues. Or a place to publicly hang people. Or other completely illegal things. They will surely be stopped by someone (the state?) from doing this? Automatically, that is without the need for a citizen to raise the point. This is a similar case: they want to do something illegal (not follow what they ageed to)
• thaumasiotes 5mo ago
  > And depending on the way it's written (IANAL) perhaps only C has standing. It can't possibly be the case that only C has standing. In your outline of the scenario, C is the only party in the wrong. They purported to sell something they didn't possess. A lawsuit would have to be filed against them, not by them.
• insane_dreamer 5mo ago
  If the deed was restricted, how could C legally sell to D without restriction? Is the answer "yes it was illegal but A would have to file suit and they're dead"?
• xp84 5mo ago
  It's worse (in terms of complexity and therefore chances of arriving at justice). From the article: July 7, 1999 – A granted the land to (T) Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a public trust, for $10 on the condition it be used as a park, 2003 - T granted the land to (W) Williamson County Park Foundation, 2003, one month later, W gave the land to the (C) City of Taylor, 2008 - C sold the land to E (Taylor EDC) for $15,000, 2025 – E sold the land to (D) data center developers Blueprint for $10 million. At some point between T -> W -> C -> E -> D the deed restriction ('accidentally'??) got deleted. I'm sure T, W, C, and E will each point fingers at any/all of the other parties, and D will just point to their done deal that had no such terms in it. If I had to guess wildly who, if anyone, had nefarious intent my bet would be that the City conspired with "W" (WCPF) to launder the deed somehow with the intent (way back in 2003) of sneakily putting the land to some non-park use that whoever runs the City government wanted at the time - perhaps at that time it was selling it off for housing development. Then maybe in 2008 (note the year) they decided building housing was a terrible idea and changed plans to shop it around for some kind of commercial use so they shuffled it to the "EDC."
  • jorblumesea 5mo ago
    if you've ever bought and sold a house, you will know people who look at deeds and titles aren't very detail oriented. they even have title insurance because it happens so often.
• SwellJoe 5mo ago
  In Texas it is exactly the neighbors who have standing to sue over deed restrictions violations.
• no-name-here 5mo ago
  > deed restriction Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand. > In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction. The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center