Arent Fox partner Thor Hearne and associates Lindsay Brinton and Meghan Largent have been published in the latest edition of the Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal, a law review published four times annually by the American Bar Association's Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Section.

The article "presents a practitioner's view of the conflict between the worthy objective the Trails Act was intended to achieve and the realities of how the Act serves to take property from landowners without providing the just compensation the Fifth Amendment requires."

Thor and his co-authors make several recommendations on how to change the Trails Act to reduce the inequities that result from its implementation.

The National Trails System Act Amendments of 1983 were adopted for the purpose of converting abandoned rail lines into public recreational trails and preserving the otherwise abandoned easements by allowing the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) to grant any railroad the ability to build a new rail line across this land at some indefinite date in the future. The Trails Act is legislation with a worthy objective, but the Trails Act is seriously flawed in the means by which it seeks to accomplish this objective. The flaws in the Trails Act, combined with the STB's implementation of the Act and the Department of Justice's (DOJ) legal strategy defending against claims arising under the Trails Act, have made the Trails Act massively and needlessly more costly for taxpayers. ...

Fortunately, the legitimate objectives of the Trails Act -- establishing public recreational trails and preserving railroad corridors -- may be achieved fairly and cost-effectively. But this can only be accomplished if Congress, the STB and the DOJ change how the Trails Act is written, administered, and defended. If these changes are made, it will result in an act that treats landowners fairly, establishes more and better trails, and spends less of the taxpayers' money.

To full read the full article in the Real Property, Trust and Estate Law Journal, please click here.