216
OCTOBER TERM, 2002
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit
No. 01-1325. Argued December 9, 2002—Decided March 26, 2003
Every State uses interest on lawyers' trust accounts (IOLTA) to pay for legal services for the needy. In promulgating Rules establishing Washington's program, the State Supreme Court required that: (a) all client funds be deposited in interest-bearing trust accounts, (b) funds that cannot earn net interest for the client be deposited in an IOLTA account, (c) lawyers direct banks to pay the net interest on the IOLTA accounts to the Legal Foundation of Washington (Foundation), and (d) the Foundation use all such funds for tax-exempt law-related charitable and educational purposes. It seems apparent from the court's explanation of its IOLTA Rules that a lawyer who mistakenly uses an IOLTA account for money that could earn interest for the client would violate the Rule. That court subsequently made its IOLTA Rules applicable to Limited Practice Officers (LPOs), nonlawyers who are licensed to act as escrowees in real estate closings. Petitioners, who have funds that are deposited by LPOs in IOLTA accounts, and others sought to enjoin respondent state official from continuing this requirement, alleging, among other things, that the taking of the interest earned on their funds in IOLTA accounts violates the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and that the requirement that client funds be placed in such accounts is an illegal taking of the beneficial use of those funds. The record suggests that petitioners' funds generated some interest that was paid to the Foundation, but that without IOLTA they would have produced no net interest for either petitioner. The District Court granted respondents summary judgment, concluding, as a factual matter, that petitioners could not make any net returns on the interest accrued in the accounts and, if they could, the funds would not be subject to the IOLTA program; and that, as a legal matter, the constitutional issue focused on what an owner has lost, not what the taker has gained, and that petitioners had lost nothing. While the case was on appeal, this Court decided in Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation, 524 U. S. 156, 172, that interest generated by funds held in IOLTA accounts is the private property of the owner of the principal. Relying on that case, a Ninth Circuit panel held that Washington's program caused an unconstitutional taking of petitioners' property and remanded
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