[arjie]

It was unclear from this summary but there are a few parties here: the original farmer A, the neighbouring family B, the city C, and the datacenter builder D.

A sold to C with the deed restriction

C sold to D without the restriction

B tried to sue to stop D from building the datacenter, but B has no standing.

Okay, that makes sense. It seems to me that A or C has standing, but not B. And depending on the way it's written (IANAL) perhaps only C has standing. But either way, B is just some random person in this relationship.

[xp84]

It's worse (in terms of complexity and therefore chances of arriving at justice). From the article:

July 7, 1999 – A granted the land to (T) Texas Parks and Recreation Foundation, a public trust, for $10 on the condition it be used as a park,

2003 - T granted the land to (W) Williamson County Park Foundation,

2003, one month later, W gave the land to the (C) City of Taylor,

2008 - C sold the land to E (Taylor EDC) for $15,000,

2025 – E sold the land to (D) data center developers Blueprint for $10 million.

At some point between T -> W -> C -> E -> D the deed restriction ('accidentally'??) got deleted. I'm sure T, W, C, and E will each point fingers at any/all of the other parties, and D will just point to their done deal that had no such terms in it.

If I had to guess wildly who, if anyone, had nefarious intent my bet would be that the City conspired with "W" (WCPF) to launder the deed somehow with the intent (way back in 2003) of sneakily putting the land to some non-park use that whoever runs the City government wanted at the time - perhaps at that time it was selling it off for housing development.

Then maybe in 2008 (note the year) they decided building housing was a terrible idea and changed plans to shop it around for some kind of commercial use so they shuffled it to the "EDC."

[jorblumesea]

if you've ever bought and sold a house, you will know people who look at deeds and titles aren't very detail oriented. they even have title insurance because it happens so often.

[jjk166]

Why shouldn't B have standing? They presumably are residents of and taxpayers to city C, and they face property devaluation stemming from nearby municipal actions.

[order-matters]

presumably because it's not their land and if A wanted to build a data center on it to begin with then B could do nothing about it.

the key issue is C doing things that it's taxpayers dont want done.

in this case though taxpayer money is not being spent, the property is being sold which means money is being generated for the taxpayers, and the new property owner is

ultimately A never had the authority to contract the land as a park indefinitely and relied on C to have respect for the deal and intent. Maybe a timeframe needed to be stipulated, but even then we are talking about land ownership - once C owns it they own it. If you wanted to buy a house and the seller said something about you never being allowed to develop a section of the backyard because they buried their goldfish there or something, and you respect that wish but now need to move as well, are you stuck with passing that obligation forward? someone can just arbitrarily decide that land cannot be used?

No thats why there is no standing, they have every right to use the land to better the taxpayers. the problem is not the method or authority, the problem is that people dont want to give up a park for a data center and dont see the data center as something that benefits the taxpayers. that issue is not one that should be settled by the deed.

the property devaluation is a problem that should be addressed independently on its own merits and not through the means of challenging if they have the authority or not.

[ip26]

A never had the authority to contract the land as a park indefinitely ... once C owns it they own it

That's not what a deed restriction is.

are you stuck with passing that obligation forward

Generally yes. Which is why the deed restriction can affect the market value of the property.

[order-matters]

The city usually has the authority to dismiss deed restrictions if it is in the best interest of the city.

my wording was too vague though, youre right in that I took for granted we were talking about the city and this doesnt generally apply to normal ownerships or else HOAs wouldnt be anywhere near as annoying as they are.

[thayne]

> if it is in the best interest of the city

I think a lot of people, including many of the citizens of this city would say this is not in the best interest of the city.

[order-matters]

the point is that argument can be made regardless of deed restrictions. the city generally does things it believes to be in the best interest of the city, so making a deed restriction with it is borderline meaningless with respect to authority. it is purely symbolic, but you would hope that people representing the city see the deal for what it is and respect it unless it's absolutely necessary to override it.. rather than treating the original owner like a sucker and putting up a data center

[perennialmind]

If you want to sell real estate while still retaining rights to visit a grave sited thereupon, the legal instrument is called an "easement". Sometimes the access grant is associated with ownership of another property (e.g. shared driveway), but it can just as easily be just to a sentimental goldfish aficionado.

[SwellJoe]

"someone can just arbitrarily decide that land cannot be used?"

Yes, deed restrictions in Texas are contractual obligations that run with the land. Due diligence in acquiring land in Texas involves making sure existing deed restrictions do not impede your intended use.

Some cities in Texas don't even have zoning (Houston is the largest such city, though it does have some land use controls these days that it historically didn't have), it's deed restrictions all the way down.

[mr_00ff00]

This is well thought out and a good point, it does feel like though there should be some “special case” for donating land to keep for public use as a park.

You are right though, how long can someone who doesn’t own that land, have authority on how it is used.

[lazyasciiart]

In Seattle the city is not allowed to take away park land without replacing it with the same area of new park land. No need to special case “if it was given by a citizen to be a park” - just make it park land at the time, and it’s permanent enough.

[db48x]

If you want a park, then build a park. Don’t give away the land and hope someone else builds a park.

[unholiness]

The Trustees of Reservations, in the Boston area, are a great example of this working well.

[db48x]

Yea, I suppose if you gave the land to an organization dedicated to building parks then you could reasonably expect to get a park out of it. Of course, they might decide to build a garage to house and maintain their fleet of mowing and gardening equipment instead.

[ultrarunner]

They don't have standing on the deed restriction, and would have to sue for the property devaluation directly. IANAL.

[SwellJoe]

That's not true. In Texas the neighbors are exactly the people who have standing to sue for deed restrictions violations.

[CGMthrowaway]

In Texas, only certain parties can enforce deed restrictions, usually:

  The original grantor (or heirs)
  A property owners’ association
  Or someone specifically granted enforcement rights

A more strongly written deed restriction would have specified a reversionary interest, wherein upon the conditions being broken, the property interest automatically springs back to the original owner. The rules of standing still apply but the sale to data center might not have ever gone through

[ajb]

Depends how it works in the jurisdiction, but in common law usually this form of restriction is like a contract, but between two pieces of land, or between a piece of land and the public, rather than between two persons. In the former case only the current owner on the benefited property can complain. In the latter case, any member of the public can - but I'm not sure if a member of the public can create such a restriction.

[philipallstar]

> Why shouldn't B have standing? They presumably are residents of and taxpayers to city C, and they face property devaluation stemming from nearby municipal actions.

It's extremely common. They get called NIMBYs, because they bought a property at a certain price and a low-ability local bureaucrat wants to do something that destroys that value.

[s1artibartfast]

you dont have standing from indirect harm or costs.

[waynecochran]

What is the legal precedent for this statement? I am not disagreeing, I just would like to know what the law is.

[everforward]

It would generally be the opposite, what law gives them standing to sue?

My knowledge as a non-lawyer generally agrees with above, most states won’t allow you to sue for neighbors doing something legal that decreases your property value (CA is the exception I’m aware of, and even then it’s a “sometimes” kind of thing).

I’m not even sure who they’d sue. Presuming the land is zoned for a datacenter, the datacenter is allowed to do datacenter things. You could sue the city to try to prevent the zoning, but sovereign immunity would preclude suing them for doing their job (zoning, in this case).

[pessimizer]

> neighbors doing something legal

The question is about doing something illegal, such as removing a covenant that was involved in a sale when reselling? If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue.

The breaking of the covenant is what is being sued over.

> Presuming the land is zoned for a datacenter, the datacenter is allowed to do datacenter things.

If my house is zoned for a possible datacenter, that doesn't mean that anyone can build a datacenter there - it is still my house. If there is a covenant that says that the land will be a park, that's the "zoning" by the seller being stricter than local zoning, which means that it also conforms to local zoning.

The zoning doesn't say "The land must be a datacenter."

edit: It would be bizarre if we can sue over terms of service as if they constitute law, but we couldn't sue over terms of sale. I can sue Facebook if they allow another user to violate their terms of service.

[everforward]

> If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue.

They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. In this case, if the original seller died then standing to sue would be inherited (I believe). If the inheritor doesn’t care, then neither does the government.

There’s also a bunch of weird edges. Like if the land just isn’t usable as a park because it’s too out of the way to be worth maintenance or building it would be insane because it’s a literal swamp, what is the city supposed to do with that? Own it and just do nothing with it in perpetuity?

> If there is a covenant that says that the land will be a park, that's the "zoning" by the seller being stricter than local zoning, which means that it also conforms to local zoning.

Sellers don’t get to do any zoning, the city does. You can add a covenant that says a single family home in San Francisco can only be used for fracking, despite the fact that there’s no oil and zoning wouldn’t allow it.

> I can sue Facebook if they allow another user to violate their terms of service.

No, you can’t. Or rather, you can file it, but it will be tossed out immediately. There is no tort for failing to enforce your own ToS. You might be able to sue Facebook for negligently failing to stop a user from breaking an actual law.

It’s against Facebook ToS to use a name other than your legal name on your account. How confident are you that you could win a lawsuit against Facebook because Post Malone’s account isn’t named “Austin Post”?

[akramachamarei]

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law) the requirements for standing were developed in the Constitution and elaborated in some later cases. To quote from the article, the apt criteria seem to me (2 of the 3):

1. Injury-in-fact: The plaintiff must have suffered or imminently will suffer injury—an invasion of a legally protected interest that is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent (that is, neither conjectural nor hypothetical; not abstract).[44][45] The injury can be either economic, non-economic, or both.

2. Causation: There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of, so that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant and not the result of the independent action of some third party who is not before the court.[46] ---

The best way to understand why standing was not found is to read the court's ruling. Unfortunately (but not unusually) 404Media has not linked to the judgement. (I will try to find it.) My guess (IANAL) is the injury is hypothetical or conjectural.

[akramachamarei]

Update: this is the most up-to-date info I could find: Case 15-25-00202-CV

https://search.txcourts.gov/Case.aspx?cn=15-25-00202-CV&coa=...

Pamela Griffin, Ralph Griffin, Michelle Griffin, Corey Griffin, Individually and as Trustee of The Griffin Revocable Living Trust, and Polly Randle

v.

NCP Travis TPP Project, LLC

But the records only go up to February 20th.

[mothballed]

There was an interesting case Knife Rights v Garland (v1) where they determined you also don't have standing for imminent jeopardy if no one has done the imminent thing in decades in a way that results in criminal rather than just mere economic damages. This is why those in danger of getting a felony for interstate commerce of switchblades are unable to challenge the law because it's not considered an injury to merely have your business destroyed and your inventory seized.

[rcxdude]

It would be even worse for city planners if anyone could sue for a reduction in their property values due to a decision they made.

[mrhottakes]

There isn't a single precedent; standing and jurisdiction are like 70% of civil procedure in law school. This page is a good jumping off point: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/standing

[tptacek]

Right, standing seems like a series of technicalities until you realize it's fundamentally what keeps judges from becoming philosopher-kings that control the entire rest of the government: judges only exercise power in actual cases and controversies between formally-identified parties.

[jfengel]

I find that standing makes judges philosopher-kings in collusion with the rest of the government. If they don't like the plaintiff, they reject them for not having "standing". If they do like the plaintiff, they'll find standing, no matter how thin a connection they have to rely on for it.

For example, the Supreme Court case where they found standing for somebody to refuse to make a same-sex wedding web site, even though nobody had actually asked for one and the person didn't even make wedding web sites. (303 Creative v Elenis)

There was no actual case. The Court invented one because they wanted the opportunity to overturn a state law, and they invented it out of whole cloth.

As opposed to the case where citizens are having their votes essentially erased because of district boundaries explicitly designed to target them. They lack standing to sue over it.

I have zero faith in "standing" as anything other than a tool for picking and choosing on ideological grounds, without having to address any facts of the matter.

[seligerasmus]

Lots of questions about the colloquial (mis)understading of standing, and the actual standard, so might as well reply here.

IAAL, and the legal precedent is... the doctrine of standing. The article is paywalled halfway down for me, so I don't know the particulars of the complaint, but it's presumably in state court. Either way, most state doctrines are some variant of the essential elements for Article III (federal) standing, which are 1) An injury in fact that has or will imminently occur (i.e., no speculative or indefinite injury); 2) That injury must be a direct consequence (but-for causation) of the defendant's actions or inactions; 3) The injury must be redressable by the court. "Soandso did something and I, an otherwise unconnected party, may potentially lose value on my home's resale value at some undefined point in time in the future" is the type of abstract, speculative injury that never clears the hurdle. To the extent you actually want to soak in the torment of 1Ls everywhere, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez are your big ones.

Outside of that, you'd likely need standing created by statute to bring a claim. But standing is just a threshold question that every litigator with a brain will attack because it kills the whole thing before reaching the merits. Even if Ps had standing, the prospects of prevailing aren't great given the timing, parties, and issues involved.

[SmirkingRevenge]

IANAL, but from all the legal podcasts/commentary I consume, I get the general impression that standing is a bit of a mess and is applied in highly inconsistent ways throughout the legal system

[munk-a]

This statement is far too vague semantically to be meaningful. It is technically correct under some extreme definitions of indirect (e.g. no affecting in any way) but if you are harmed in many inobvious manners you have recourse. In this specific example the neighbor is harmed through their property valuation - whether that will be a successful suit I cannot comment on but there is observed harm. Additionally, if a relatively forgotten homeless person is murdered and the murderer is found we still charge them - even if no individual is directly harmed by the murder happening we have a general understanding that murder is bad. Would you consider murder is bad to be a direct harm and thus skirt around the vague statement above or would you consider murder is bad to be an indirect harm and thus challenge the validity of charging someone with murder of someone without any obvious social ties? Also, if it's just some random person being murdered is the emotional distress on a family enough of a direct harm to qualify for your statement or do you think that murder (when it is not a failed attempt) is a crime for which no person has standing (aka the Telvanni way).

[s1artibartfast]

If we are taking about standing to sue, we are talking civil lawsuits, not criminal law. This distinction sresolves many of your questions. Yes there are nuances, but in general I think it is a reasonable huristic.

If Mcdonalds raises the price of burgers, I have more costs, but that alone is not grounds to sue Mcdonalds.

If a burgler robs mcdonalds driving a price hike, that is not cause for a customer to sue the robber.

[Glyptodon]

So there are two issues: (c) shouldn't be able to sell without the restriction, and (b) knowing of the restriction made decisions in good faith believing it would be followed and hence have been harmed by it not being followed, no? If (b) doesn't have standing, nobody does and deed restrictions are de facto useless.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

(a) has to sue and they will prevail.

(b) does not have standing.

[sleepybrett]

.. and if A is dead?

[HWR_14]

Property rights would inherit. So one of their relatives or heirs. If they had no one to inherit the restriction it would go to the state - but the state would have gotten the land unrestricted in that case anyway.

[no-name-here]

> deed restriction

Was there ever a deed restriction? The government says no, but they say there was something else which I don’t understand.

> In the notes about the grantee, the cash warranty deed states that the property was to be held in trust for future use as parkland by Williamson County, Texas. This was not a deed restriction.

The rest of the page doesn’t display properly on iOS. https://taylortx.gov/1293/Blueprint-Projects-Data-Center

[thaumasiotes]

> And depending on the way it's written (IANAL) perhaps only C has standing.

It can't possibly be the case that only C has standing. In your outline of the scenario, C is the only party in the wrong. They purported to sell something they didn't possess. A lawsuit would have to be filed against them, not by them.

[mindslight]

B should have standing from the park designation creating a public easement. I'm guessing the deed restrictions are pretty thin, and that pages++ of legalese would have done a better job. But this is the exact dynamic that everyone (rightly) hates attorneys for, both on the giving side ($$$ to hire an attorney to copypasta all that crap), as well as on the receiving side (pages of legalese are bound to create a bunch of extra facets to be dealt with by both the city and residents). Rather than the same rough type of structure needing to be reinvented over and over out of common law cloth, we really need reform aimed at defining commonly understood constructs that can simply be instantiated by reference.

[BrandoElFollito]

I don't know how the law works in the US, but isn't the selling by C illegal and moot? C accepted the conditions, but did not repect them.

Shouldn't C be attacked (legally of course) automatically?

Say C decides to build on a land they own a nuclear plant with known life endengering issues. Or a place to publicly hang people. Or other completely illegal things. They will surely be stopped by someone (the state?) from doing this? Automatically, that is without the need for a citizen to raise the point.

This is a similar case: they want to do something illegal (not follow what they ageed to)

[HWR_14]

B doesn't have standing because they are indirectly harmed? So if I sell a home in an HOA without the HOA covenant on the deed, can the HOA sue? It seems they are also only indirectly harmed.

[torstenvl]

No because the HOA represents the other members of the community who were also subject to the same CCRs.

[HWR_14]

Why would that make them harmed?

[IAmBroom]

My understanding is that the HOA could sue you, presuming that they baked into your purchase contract the force of their authority.

You would then have violated your contract with the HOA.

I also expect that the city violated their contract with A('s heirs). B still has no standing.

[NDlurker]

I wouldn't call a community member some random person.

[msandford]

Please tell me how I can just strip deed restrictions simply because I don't like them and/or they're inconvenient for me.

Deed restrictions are the mechanism that basically all HOAs are built upon so if you can just skirt around them because $reasons there are millions of people who would like to know.

[stronglikedan]

> Please tell me how I can just strip deed restrictions simply because I don't like them and/or they're inconvenient for me.

Easy - be a municipality. There's a reason the phrase "can't fight city hall" exists, and is for the most part universally true.

[cogman10]

Yeah, city law can easily override deed laws. But further, eminent domain allows the city to strip away deed restrictions through a "one weird trick". The city can eminent domain the land from themselves removing the restriction and then sell it privately.

The same way the city can eminent domain your home and put a road through it. The HOA can't stop the city from putting in a new road.

[msandford]

Aren't deed restrictions usually done at the state level? If so, the city can't just magic them away. State law is going to trump city law unless the city's restrictions are tighter.

[IAmBroom]

Can they do so retroactively? If they didn't declare imminent domain beforehand, I'd expect this is contract violation.

But we're all guessing at Lawyer Facts(tm).

[Avicebron]

So, the threat of violence (police/legal) if you complain about members of city hall lining their pockets with data center contracts.

[like_any_other]

Dig up the names and addresses of the public officials responsible for that decision and watch the phrase disintegrate.

[gfisher]

But that is how deed restrictions are enforced. If you didn't have that mechanism, then they would just not exist upon death, etc.

[ortusdux]

Depends on the wording. "Upon X, the land shall revert to Y, or current heir" is common verbiage in deed restrictions.

[fsckboy]

"standing" is a made-up concept with a fairly short history. Remember how we look back at the early part of the 20th century as being filled with virtuous people at every level of industry and govt? me neither:

The modern U.S. doctrine of standing traces back to mid-20th-century Supreme Court cases that crystallized the “injury in fact,” causation, and redressability triad, but its roots lie in early 20th-century rulings such as Fairchild v. Hughes (1920) that first linked federal judicial power to a plaintiff’s concrete injury.

[general1465]

It is exactly same like when OEM will make you sign agreement that you won't try to reverse engineer the car, but if you will flip it without the restriction, then all is clear.

[reactordev]

In which case C should be held culpable for the violation of the terms from A. As the condition of the sale. B should not sue D, but C. Try to get an A witness.

[SwellJoe]

In Texas it is exactly the neighbors who have standing to sue over deed restrictions violations.

[adjejmxbdjdn]

Are B not part of the city?

Why wouldn’t they have standing on an action by their government?

(This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one).

[zeroonetwothree]

Generally the idea is that if you don’t like what the government does you deal with it through politics (elections and so on).

You only have standing if the government is actually directly harming you.

[insane_dreamer]

If the deed was restricted, how could C legally sell to D without restriction?

Is the answer "yes it was illegal but A would have to file suit and they're dead"?