Len Hoffmann and his neighbors near Watford City, North Dakota didn't fight the pipeline. When WBI Energy showed up in 2018 with federal eminent domain authority under the Natural Gas Act and demanded a right-of-way across their ranches, the landowners accepted that the pipeline was going in — they just wanted to be paid fairly. WBI's opening offer was just over half the going market rate, so the ranchers did what the legal system is supposed to allow: they went to court. Three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, a federal judge ruled in their favor — the ranchers were right about the land value, and North Dakota law entitled them to have their legal costs covered by WBI. Then the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and threw out the fee award. The court reasoned that because WBI was operating under federal eminent domain authority, state law didn't apply — and federal law doesn't require companies to reimburse legal costs. The result is a textbook Catch-22: accept whatever lowball number a pipeline company offers, or fight for a fair price in court and pay for the privilege out of your own pocket, effectively handing back a chunk of the settlement you just won. The ranchers, backed by the Institute for Justice, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Twelve state attorneys general filed briefs in support. As of late 2025, the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take the case.
Commentary: So to recap: a private company borrowed the government's power to force ranchers off their own land, offered them half of what it was worth, got caught, and then a federal court ruled the ranchers had to fund the entire three-year fight to prove it — out of their own settlement. The government handed a corporation a battering ram and then charged the people it hit for the damage. Remarkable system.
⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article and corroborating reporting from the Institute for Justice and North Dakota Monitor.
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