When a pipeline company takes part of your land and you have to hire a lawyer to get a fair price, the Supreme Court is deciding who pays that lawyer.
Story Highlights
- North Dakota ranchers spent about three years in court to get a fair price for a pipeline path across their land.
- Their legal bill came to about $383,000, most of it lawyer fees, and a trial judge ordered the company to pay it under state law.
- An appeals court erased that order, ruling the company stood in the federal government’s place and owed only the value of the land.
- Other appeals courts have let state fee laws apply, so owners in different regions are treated differently.
How The Ranchers Ended Up In Court
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the ranchers’ case on Monday, November 9. The ranchers, led by Leonard Hoffmann, own land in McKenzie County, North Dakota. WBI Energy Transmission, a natural gas pipeline company, won federal approval to run a line across it. When the two sides could not agree on a price, WBI used eminent domain, the power to take private land for a public project as long as the owner is paid. What it took was an easement, a legal right to use a strip of the land for the pipeline.
The ranchers say they had no choice but to fight. WBI argued it owed only the drop in the land’s sale value caused by the pipeline, a drop the ranchers’ lawyers say WBI claimed “maybe was nothing at all.” The ranchers hired lawyers to prove otherwise, and the trial judge let them show what pipeline companies typically pay for easements. After about three years, the two sides settled on a price. They left one issue open for the courts: who pays for the fight.
The Bill For Getting A Fair Price
The ranchers asked for about $332,000 in lawyer fees and about $51,000 in other costs, roughly $383,000 in all. North Dakota law lets landowners recover reasonable legal costs when their land is taken, and a federal trial judge used that law to order WBI to pay. Under that order, the ranchers would have received a fair price for the land with no bill for proving it.
The Eighth Circuit, the federal appeals court that covers North Dakota, threw out the fee order on March 24, 2025. The judges said lawyer fees are usually not owed when the United States takes land, and that nothing changes when the government lends that power to a private company under the Natural Gas Act, the federal law for interstate gas pipelines. Under that ruling, the ranchers keep the price of the easement but carry the cost of winning it.
What Each Side Asked The Justices For
The ranchers asked the Court to restore the fee order. They argue that the Natural Gas Act says nothing about how to measure what an owner is owed, so North Dakota’s rules should apply. Sam Spiegelman, a lawyer for the landowners, warned that without fee protection, landowners across the country “will not have any good incentive to pursue the vindication of the full value of their land.” Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice, a property rights law firm that represents the ranchers, put it this way: “What’s at stake here are property rights protections.”
WBI asked the Court to keep the appeals court ruling. The Trump administration sided with the company and shared its argument time. The government’s brief argues that when Congress hands out federal eminent domain power without naming a different rule, the Fifth Amendment standard applies. That standard pays the value of the property taken, and lawyer fees are not part of it. WBI says one national rule is needed for pipelines that cross state lines.
What It Could Mean For Your Wallet
Several other federal appeals courts have gone the other way and let state fee laws apply when a private pipeline takes land. That means two families facing the same pipeline offer could end up with very different bills, depending on where they live. The Supreme Court’s ruling, expected by summer 2027, will settle the question for the whole country.
For a family whose land sits in a pipeline’s path, the math is simple. If the company’s offer is low, getting a fair price can take years in court and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs. If owners must pay those costs themselves, much of a fair price can go to the lawyers who won it.
Bottom Line
This case is about more than one set of lawyer bills. It decides whether a landowner who is forced to give up land can also be forced to pay for the right to be paid fairly. The ranchers say a company that takes your land should cover the cost of making you whole. The company and the federal government say the Constitution asks only for the value of the land. The justices will decide which view becomes the rule for owners everywhere.
Sources:
scotusblog.com, law.cornell.edu, ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov, justice.gov, oyez.org, theepochtimes.com