In the case of Thomas R. Phillips, et al. v. Washington Legal Foundation, et al., 1997, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that interest earned on funds held in trust by lawyers (Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts or IOLTA) is private property for purposes of the Takings Clause under Fifth Amendment to US Constitution. The court found that when a client's money is placed into an IOLTA account and generates interest, it becomes their private property even though they may not directly receive this income due to administrative costs exceeding potential earnings from non-IOLTA accounts. This decision was based upon earlier precedents which established that any financial gain derived from personal assets constitutes as individual property rights protected by law against government seizure without just compensation.

In the dissenting opinion for Thomas R. Phillips, et al. v. Washington Legal Foundation, Justice Stevens argued that interest on lawyers' trust accounts (IOLTA) does not constitute a taking under the Fifth Amendment because clients do not lose any of their property or suffer any economic loss as a result of these programs. He emphasized that IOLTAs are designed to generate funds from money which would otherwise yield no return due to administrative and banking costs associated with small or short-term deposits. Therefore, he contended that there is no private property at stake since without IOLTAs such client funds would earn no interest whatsoever; hence nothing has been taken away from them in violation of the Constitution's Takings Clause.