Recent North American Court Cases

Abstract

This installment covers the United States, Canada and Mexico. It opens with three statements of position. In American condemnation, highest and best use is litigated as a matter of evidence and appellate review runs substantially through admissibility. In Canada two provinces have moved in opposite directions within one federation: Quebec's Bill 22, the Loi concernant l'expropriation, in force from 29 December 2023, abolished the valeur au proprietaire - value to the owner - and substituted market value, while Ontario retains compensation on four heads of which market value is only the first, with the scheme-driven increase in value statutorily excluded; and the Cowichan and Wolastoqey litigation has put in question what a fee simple is when Aboriginal title is claimed over land privately held. In Mexico the Ley de Expropiacion stands still while the case law moves: a binding thesis approved by the Suprema Corte's First Chamber in August 2025 qualifies registry protection at the root of title, and the Court, sitting only as a full bench since September 2025, has sent a nineteenth-century chain of title over ejido land back for constitutional review, an item that is press-sourced pending publication of the judgment. Decisions of 2025-26 follow under the eight categories. Among them: Pung v. Isabella County, where the Supreme Court of the United States measured a tax-sale surplus by the auction price rather than fair market value; Pignetti on noncontiguous parcels under a unified use; Hoffmann v. WBI Energy, on which certiorari was granted in June 2026; an Ontario partial taking valued to a mid-rise highest and best use; and one of the first decisions under Quebec's new Act. The taxation material includes South Dakota's holding that a certified appraiser's opinion is not required to rebut an assessment, and an Oregon Tax Court magistrate's refusal to treat a corporate campus as a single special-purpose asset. Lending and liability turn on duty to the intended user and on the pleading ruling in the Rocket Mortgage appraisal-bias case, carried as allegation; family, estate and partnership items turn on which appraisal, at which date, a court will prefer; and the insurance material on when a court will disturb an appraisal award. No systematic search of the American reporters was made, and Canada's federal Expropriation Act is unsurveyed.