Source: http://gideonstrumpet.info/category/uncategorized/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 14:28:23+00:00

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This article is a tad on the long side for an on-line piece, but it is not lawyer stuff; it is written for the intelligent layman in clear English and provides a lot of information about the law of eminent domain, and about the dark side of government practices in land acquisition. Not a pretty story, but it provides ample support for Lewis Orgel’s observation in his treatise “Valuation Under Eminent Domain” (1953) that eminent domain is “the dark corner of the law.” That it is.
This article, by the way, harks back to the 1960s — 1970s era of law journal articles that were critical of government land acquisition practices and that revealed abuses of condemnees’ rights and exposed the prevalent undercompensation of condemnees. Some of these abuses were rectified by courts and legislatures, but only some. The law of eminent domain remains basically biased against condemnees, and the US Supreme Court, as well as the California Supreme Court have explicitly conceded that the constitutionally mandated “just compensation” provided for in the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause is actually undercompensation. See for example Gideon Kanner, “Fairness and Justice,” or Judicial Bait-and-Switch? 4 Albany Law Review 38 (2011).
Reading this Pro Publica article will be well worth your while if you have any interest in eminent domain.
Word reaches us that the California Supreme Court has granted review in a regulatory taking case: Bottini v. County of San Diego. The issue in question is described on David Ettinger’s Cal Supreme Court blog “At the Podium” as follows.
Ettinger is a partner in the appellate powerhouse law firm of Horvitz & Levy, and runs his blog on the doings of California appellate courts.
Remember the Poletown case? Sure you do. That was the infamous decision of a divided Michigan Supreme Court, that permitted the eminent domain taking of the Detroit community of Poletown in order to raze it and turn over its site to General Motors for a new Cadillac plant. The taking displaced an unoffending, diverse community, razing hundreds of homes, businesses and churches, as well as a major hospital, in order to subsidize GM which threatened to build this facility in Ohio, unless Detroit ponied up. It did. This caper cost the taxpayers some $200 million and it spared GM having to pay its full tax share. It was supposed to produce thousands of jobs. But it didn’t. By the time the dispatch about closing this plant came from the Detroit Free Press, there were only 1500 employees at that plant instead the 5000 that were promised.
See https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/john-gallagher/2018/11/26/gm-detroit-hamtramck-plant-closing/2114067002/ (cut and paste this link in your browser).
And of course, as you may remember, eventually GM filed for bankruptcy in the 2008 Great Recession anyway and defaulted on a bunch of bonds held by individual investors trying to save for their old age. In a case of too little and too late, in due course the Michigan Supreme Court came to its senses and overruled the Poletown case in Wayne County v. Hathcock.
And so Detroit joins the list of similar venues in which much was promised but little or nothing delivered after wasting fortunes in public funds and grossly undercompensating the displaced condemnee-owners of land in the path of such projects.
FULL DISCLOSURE: Your faithful servant, along with the late Bert Burgoyne of Detroit, and Toby Brigham the lion of Miami, were counsel in that case, representing the Sisters of Mercy, owners of that taken hospital.
The US Supreme Court has ordered re-argument in Knick v. Township of Scott, and ordered the parties to file additional short letter-briefs by the end of November. Our colleague, Robert Thomas has put the Court’s full order in his blog www.inversecondemnation.com. So if you have an interest in regulatory takings, get over to that blog and get it straight from the horse’s mouth. We recommend you do so, because the re-argument order goes into some detail as to what information the Court wants. Mr. Thomas provides a helpful explanation and commentary.
PRNewswire.com reports that when the State Of Texas took some 9500 square feet of land out of an auto salvage operation, it offered the owners $65,000. However, after trial, a Bell County jury brought in a verdict of $500,000. The taking involved moving of the owners’ driveway, which caused safety problems and accidents.
State of Texas v. Skyway Holdings LLC, No. 0015-04-083, filed in the Bell County Court of Law No. 3.
On October 2nd, our friend and fellow blogmeister, Robert Thomas, gave us a preview of the coming oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott in which he posed the following question: Just How Badly Can SCOTUS Screw up Takings Law?
The oral arguments in Knick took place yesterday, and we now have an answer of sorts. There is no limit. Example: when the court granted cert, it did so on the question of whether the Williamson County case should be reconsidered to eliminate the requirement that the aggrieved land owner whose land has been taken without compensation, may not sue in federal court for this constitutional violation, but must instead sue in state court to “ripen” the case, 42 USC Sec 1983 to the contrary notwithstanding. So we started reading the transcript of the Knick oral argument, and what did we find? For openers, a question from the bench having to do with abstention which is in no way connected to the question presented, and which was dealt with by the court in Allegheny County v. Frank Mashuda Co. some time ago — a fact the questioner was obviously not acquainted with. Naturally, abstention was never raised or briefed below in the Knick case. And so it goes.
There you will find such gems as Justice Breyer’s question asking whether SCOTUS should “let this sleeping dog lie,” overlooking the principle that the core function of the supreme court is to decide legal “sleeping dogs,” not perpetuate them. Besides, the owner’s counsel disposed of that idea by pointing out that Williamson County was not a sleeping dog but rather a wild dog running through the country. Still, in spite of our pessimism (of which more presently) we must rein in our feeling of impending doom and await the decision. For in spite of the court’s all too obvious misunderstanding of procedure in takings cases there is some likelihood that something in Williamson County will be overruled. And if that happens that would be progress — a step in the right direction. So let’s stay tuned. And pray.
Oh, and about that pessimism of ours, we were influenced years ago by the line of the late Bert Burgoyne, a great condemnation lawyer in Detroit, who once observed in our presence that “The problem with this field of law is that liberal judges don’t believe in private property, and conservative judges don’t believe in making the government pay.” As time goes on, we find the unpleasant truth embedded in that line to be more and more obvious. But even that neither explains nor justifies the intellectual and moral mess the courts have made of things law. Along with our co-author Michael M Berger, we just completed a law review article available in manuscript form on SSRN, entitled, The Nasty Brutish and Short Life of Agins v. City of Tiburon. We show there how SCOTUS so screwed up its opinion in Agins that it had to overrule it, not once but twice, thus suggesting that in this field of law, SCOTUS has a reverse Midas touch: just about everything it touches in this field turns to intellectual crap.
So read that transcript, and make up your own mind.
We haven’t had much to say lately about California’s abuilding “bullet train” that in the sweet bye and bye will connect Los Angeles (and Orange County) with San Francisco. Now here is a dispatch from the LA Times, bringing us up to date on what’s going on. Worth a read.
Bottom line: the folks in the northeast San Fernando Valley, along the train’s proposed path are furious. They shouted down the railroad types at a recent “town hall” style meeting, and in the inimitable phrasing of LA Times columnist Steve Lopez, if tomatoes had been available they would have been flying. Whether that railroad project will ever be completed, and if so, when remains questionable.

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