Case Summaries

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 122 (click for full text of opinion) On appeal after remand, the Utah Court of Appeals concluded that SLC’s previous written instructions to a billboard relocation applicant estopped it from thereafter refusing to compensate the applicant upon denial of the requested relocation.  R.O.A. General is the successor to Outfront Media LLC, formerly known...

Utah Supreme Court 2025 UT 30 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Supreme Court held that a citizen referendum on a county rezone was moot because the property had since been incorporated into Erda city and county no longer had land use authority. In 2020, Tooele County passed a zoning ordinance that rezoned a 22-acre agricultural parcel of...

Utah Supreme Court 2025 UT 25 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Supreme Court held that the public duty doctrine precludes resident property owners’ nuisance claims against Salt Lake City related to issues of unsheltered people on city-owned properties. A group of residents who live or operate businesses through Salt Lake City filed a lawsuit alleging the City’s...

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 85 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Court of Appeals held that a resident could not challenge a rezone approval on the basis of a due process violation for alleged missteps in city council rules of procedure. A developer applied to Ivins City for a zoning change on a 113-acre property...

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 58 (click for full text of opinion) On appeal after a second trial, the Utah Court of Appeals clarified the evidentiary rules for general and special benefits in eminent domain cases, and remanded the case for a third trial on damages. In 2009, UDOT condemned a portion of property owned by Boggess-Draper Company,...

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 54 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Court of Appeals held that a private landowner has no authority to exercise eminent domain to condemn easement rights for private development. WE Five LLC owns a parcel of landlocked property that originated from a larger parcel that was divided into several separate parcels...

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 55 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Court of Appeals reversed the city’s denial of a building permit for an existing improperly subdivided lot because the provisions of city’s ordinances allowing for such lots to be developed did not plainly restrict the application on the basis of off-site road conditions.  North...

Utah Court of Appeals 2025 UT App 41 (click for full text of opinion) The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a boundary-by-agreement claim that sought to infer an agreement from silence or inaction, which improperly conflated the doctrine of boundary by acquiescence. In 2012, the Freestones built a fence along a line that they and their neighbors...

US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals 131 F.4th 1153 (10th Cir. 2025) (click for full text of opinion) The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a federal law on access for public lands preempted Wyoming’s trespass law in relation to “corner crossing”—the act of stepping from one parcel of public land to another at their common corner without physically...

Utah Court of Appeals 2024 UT App 179 (click for full text of opinion)  The Utah Court of Appeals distinguished the legal duty of county recorders to accurately record instruments depicting record title, even when conflicting, while rejecting a petition to require the recorder to confirm legal title by altering or removing previously recorded instruments.  Golden Spike is a nonprofit...