North Dakota landowners argue property rights dispute before US Supreme Court

A group of northwest North Dakota landowners urged U.S. Supreme Court justices Monday to find that they should be reimbursed for legal costs they paid in a land dispute with a pipeline company. Natural gas pipeline developer WBI Energy used federal eminent domain to take portions of the McKenzie County landowners’ properties in 2018. The owners were reimbursed for the value of their land under a confidential settlement signed in 2021, according to court records. But that didn’t include the attorney fees the property owners incurred to reach that agreement. The property owners — which include Leonard and Denae Hoffmann, Randall Stevenson and Rocky Prestangen — argue that WBI is required to compensate them for those costs under North Dakota law. WBI says that because it used a federal power to take the land, state law doesn’t apply. After an appeals court sided with WBI in the suit last year, the property owners petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.

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