Legal

Don’t Mix Agent and Principal Duties

Sometimes corporate landlords or railroads hire out of home companies to act as their agent to manage out of home leases.  It will be expensive for you if you use an agent’s position to advantage your company.  That’s the lesson of Craig Outdoor, Midwest Outdoor and Patriot Outdoor v Viacom […]

OUTFRONT Suing San Jose

OUTFRONT is suing the city of San Jose over the decision to grant two digital billboards at the San Jose Airport to Clear Channel Outdoor.  OUTFRONT contends the billboards should have been awarded as part of a competitive bidding process.  The city claims it is authorized to approve the digital […]

New and Noted

A Milford, Connecticut billboard company is trying for the third time to get approval to erect a digital billboard along I-95.  Opponents complained that the digital billboard will cause light pollution and trotted out a ten year old Swedish study that found that digital billboards are distracting.  You need to […]

Richard Hamlin on Constructive Notice

California out of home attorney Richard Hamlin had this comment on Rothfelder on Unrecorded Leases and Constructive Notice. Early in my OOH career, I asked my client why they did not record their leases.  He said it became too much of an administrative burden to deal with requests to release […]

Rothfelder On Unrecorded Leases and Constructive Notice

Billboard Insider has published numerous articles, including in its Guide to Leases, Easements, and Real Estate, advising that the prudent billboard operator should record his ground lease, or at least of memorandum of the lease. By officially recording in the county real property records, the operator insures the world has […]

Rothfelder On Texas SB 19 And The First Amendment Right To Refuse Firearm Ads

It seems like everyday there’s a new mass shooting, whether its Uvalde, Buffalo, Parkland, Sandy Hook, and on and on. And, just as predictably, there’s more and more talk about gun control legislation.  Especially in these tragic times, everybody appears to have an opinion under the Fourth Amendment, namely whether […]

Why GEFT May Have a Case Against Westfield

In a Billboard Insider article yesterday, GEFT Outdoor’s Jeff Lee was optimistic that he’ll win litigation against the City of Westfield even though Reagan v Austin seems has eliminated his ability to challenge Westfield’s sign code on the basis of differing treatment of on-premise versus off-premise signs.  The issue has […]

Reagan v Austin Impacts Indiana Court Decision

In a July 11 ruling on GEFT Outdoor v City of Westfield the Indiana US Court of Appeals for the Seventh District remanded an out of home dispute back to a lower court to reconsider a verdict in light of Reagan v Austin. Westfield, Indiana denied a request by GEFT […]

Additional Thoughts on Lamar vs TxDOT

We had a number of comments from yesterdays’ article, by Richard Rothfelder, on Lamar vs TxDOT including the following post from Richard Hamlin of Hamlin Cody based in California. State officials have two types of duties, ministerial and discretionary. A discretionary duty gives the official room to interpret facts and […]

Rothfelder On Lamar vs TxDOT And Sovereign Immunity

The Texas Court of Appeals, for the 14th District in Houston, issued its opinion on May 12, 2022 in Lamar vs Texas Department of Transportation, holding that TxDOT has sovereign immunity against Lamar’s claims that it’s “officials interpreted the rules incorrectly when more than four years after Lamar last paid […]