Land Use Litigation & Mediation

What We Do

We litigate land use matters, defending our clients’ land use approvals and advocating for their projects in administrative appeals and in court. Although we prefer to resolve project-related disputes outside the courtroom, when litigation is unavoidable, we are resolute advocates for our clients. We vigorously defend our clients’ land use permits and pursue claims against opposing parties to defend our clients’ property rights. We also represent property owners subject to condemnation actions to ensure government meets the legal and procedural requirements for acquiring property and pays full fair market value. We practice before hearing examiners, state hearing bodies including the Growth Management Hearings Board and Shoreline Hearings Board, and at all levels of the courts. We are proud of our long record of success.

We also mediate land use disputes. The combination of our substantive knowledge, our long-standing legal experience, and our commitment to courteous, interest-based negotiation enables us to bring even the most challenging disputes to resolution.

Our recent litigation work includes:

• Successfully defended appeals of land use approvals for multiple urban multifamily residential and mixed-use projects providing more than 1,000 units of new housing in downtown Seattle through the Court of Appeals level, including issues of first impression relating to the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA).
• Successfully defended appeals of land use approvals for multiple industrial projects totaling more than 5 M square feet of development on more than 500 of acres of property, including novel issues relating to environmental justice and air quality impacts under SEPA.
• Successfully defended appeal of SEPA review of development agreement for mixed use project exceeding 1.75 M square feet on a 250-acre site, including issues relating to traffic, wetlands, groundwater, cultural resources and legacy contamination.
• Successfully defended appeals of multiple affordable housing projects,

• Successfully defended multiple appeals of permits for new and expanded public schools.