Not much to say on this one, except to provide a link to the Owners’ Counsel blog. Here it is: http://ownerscounsel.blogspot.com/2012/05/new-orleans-eminent-domain-attorneys.html. It’s headlined:
“New Orleans Eminent Domain Attorney Secures More Than $9 Million Just Compensation for Private Property in Hospital Project Footprint.”
The State’s offer was $4,500,000.
First, Our colleague Robert H. Thomas discusses a neat case out of the Fifth Circuit in which the court gives deserved credit to the Pacific Legal Foundation’s advocacy, and explains why the fershluggene ripeness rule of Williamson County does not, and doctrinally speaking, cannot apply to cases where the plaintiff-property owner complains of deprivation of due process, rather than an uncompensated taking. It’s about time some sensible federal judges started putting an end to this misuse of twisted legal doctrine. Go to www.inversecondemnation.com, the post of May 15th, entitled Fifth Circuit: Williamson County Ripeness Doctrine Does Not Bar Due Process Claims in Federal Court. Good show, that, with a link to the opinion.
Second. Check out Ilya Somin’s post (and esuing comments) on the Volokh Conspiracy, spotlighting abuse of eminent domain in Virginia as a departure point – click here for a Richmond Times Dispatch article by Barton Hinckle on that subject. Somin’s piece stimulates a discussion of left v. right views on abuses of the power of eminent domain.
We find some of these academic quarrels a bit much at times, but you can disregard the academic folks’ woolly-headed excesses and get an insight into this controversy that leaves unanswered the question of why people who profess to be all in favor of the poor, downtrodden members of society, and against “large corporations,” cheer when the selfsame downtrodden folks are callously evicted from their modest homes and apartments for the benefit of large, wealthy corporations for whose financial gain the takings of private property are pursued. See e.g., 31 Univ. Hawaii L. Rev. at 467, notes 185-203. If you can explain that one, let us know.
We concluded our recent dispatch on the status of the California high speed railroad — click here — with the news that California is facing a $16 billion budget shortfall. Now, faced with a newly-revealed $16 billion budgetary shortfall, our Governor dropped the other shoe and announced that the budget of California courts is being cut by some one-half billion dollars — that’s $500,000,000. That’s on top of the previous $350 million in cuts.
Needless to say, judges are incensed, and the Alliance of California Judges has issued a statement that pulls no punches. Quoth a dispatch from the Alliance of Calkifornia Judges, dated May 14, 2012:
“The day of reckoning has come to the [California] judiciary. Years of mismanagement and misplaced priorities by the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts have caused not only a budget crisis, but a crisis in confidence. Over half a billion dollars wasted on a failed computer project, lavish salaries, pension spikes and retroactive pay raises for San Francisco bureaucrats, exorbitant construction and building maintenance programs and an unwillingness to rein in the excesses of the AOC will cause local courts to cut essential courtroom staff and hours of operations.”
Though our information is a bit short on details, we are reliably informed that in the case of In the Matter of Paolella, Supreme Court Richmond County, New York, Index No. 4018/07, decision filed May 7, 2012, the trial court awarded $810,000 in an eminent domain case involving wetlands, in which the city’s opinion of damages was $185,000. The award was thus over four times the city’s contention.
For the benefit of readers who are not acquainted with New York matters, over there the Supreme Court is a trial court — the lowest court of general jurisdiction (the highest New York court is called the Court of Appeals), and Richmond County is Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of New York City.
Let’s see, where were we? As the sun set in the west, the feds made it clear that if California wants to get its hands on that federal money for the high speed rail line eventually connecting San Diego and San Francisco, it will have to complete its first 120-mile segment by September 2017. For openers, to accomplish that, the railroad builders will require 120 permits from different regulatory bodies, will have to acquire 1,100 parcels of land for the right of way, and will have to spend money at the rate of $3.5 million per day, or $2,430.55 per minute, 24/7.
The problem is that it has never been done on that scale before. Earlier feats of California public project building efficiency had a money “burn rate” — love that term! — of only $1.8 million a day, and even given California’s well earned reputation for profligacy, the idea of doing so at twice the earlier rate gives one pause. And did we mention that the project is now months behind schedule?
We suggest you read all about it in Ralph Vartabedian, High-Speed Spending: Bullet Train May Need $3.5 Million a Day, Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012 — click here.
And oh yes, just the other day California Governor Jerry Brown let it be known that past estimates of the budget deficit that is facing California this year, were optimistic, and that the projected deficit for the coming year is now up to $16 billion, which will require severe cuts in state spending.
For a fuller treatment of California’s budgetary problems see Adam Nagourney, Fiscal Woes Boomerang for Brown in California, N.Y. Times, May 14, 2o12, at p. A1 — click here.
Remember the “Occupy L.A.” caper? Of course you do. That was our own la-la land equivalent of “occupy Wall Street.” Ring a bell now? That was the caper wherein the L.A. “occupiers” took over the city hall lawn (which they eventually destroyed), but were welcomed by local politicos with open arms.
“Protesters were welcomed warmly by city law makers when they launched their demonstration last September as part of a nationwide protest against economic inequality.”
“The [city] council passed a resolution in support of the group’s ‘peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment rights’ and then-Council President Eric Garcetti told protesters: ‘Stay as long as you need, we’re here to support you.’”
So we are reminded by the Los Angeles Times — Kate Linthicum, Taxpayers’ Bill for Occupy L.A. Protest Rises to $4.7 Million, L.A. Times, May 12, 2012, which also brings the dispatch that the increase in cost comes to $2 million over an earlier estimate given by the city only last February.
So we can’t help wondering: where is Garcetti and his compadres now when the time comes to pay the tab for the political “free lunch” they so generously dispensed (out of city funds, natch) to the “occupiers”? As far as we can tell, they are nowhere to be seen, and as sure as God made little green apples, they are not likely to contribute a penny out of their own pockets toward footing the bill for their generosity.
Bottom line: for this, they got money. For paying full indemnity for the demonstrable economic harm they inflict on people whose resources they plunder in connection with city land acquisitions, they don’t got money. After all, as the California Supreme Courtt once put it, if people are paid for all economic losses inflicted on them by eminent domain takings, we’ll just have to declare “an embargo” oon public works. Oh dear.
In the meantime the city of L.A. is facing a $238 million budget deficit and there is a not-insignificant chance that it will eventually go insolvent. Welcome to la-la land.
Possibly, you may recall the Half Moon Bay fiasco of a while back. To read our story about that case, click here. Half Moon Bay is a posh little town in Northern California that got itself into trouble (by having a $36 million judgment entered against itself) when it flooded a local property and then had the chutzpa to assert that the aforementioned property thus became a protected “wetland” that could neither be drained, nor filled, nor built upon. Long story short, the city outsmarted itself when it transferred the ensuing inverse condemnation action by the property’s owner from state to federal court, and then argued after a week-long trial — no, we are not making this up — that the case should have been tried in state court all along. The federal judge was not amused, and he entered a $36 million judgment against the city which lucked out because it was able to settle the case for half that amount – $18 million.
Now word reaches us (reported by Mark Noack, City Seeks Payback for Beachwood Loss, Half Moon Bay Review of May 10, 2012 – click here), that the city, in another display of chutzpa, is trying to recoup some of its payments under that settlement, by making a claim against its former insurance company in spite of the fact that the insurance policy in question excludes coverage for inverse condemnation, and it expired 20 years ago. Good luck with that, although this is California, folks, where insurance companies are not exactly coddled by the courts, although things are better for them than they used to be.
We’ll try to keep an eye on this caper, and will let you know how it all turns out.
The Los Angeles Times reports that a Zhaotang woman set off a suicide bomb, killing herself and two “low level community officials” who came to her home to sign an agreement concerning the compulsory acquisition of her home. Barbara Demick, Distraught Homeowner Kills 2 in China Bombing, L.A. Times, May 11, 2012, at p. A8 – click here.
There are two items in that story that warrant notice. First, with specific regard to these events, they precipitated “a surprising degree of support on China’s social media.” Which sends a message that messing with people’s turf can be hazardous to your health, and that when a taking of private property is truly necessary, it should be accompanied by procedural safeguards and a modicum of sensitivity to the feelings of the displaced condemnees. Second, in tems of hard news that rarely make it into print over here, it turns out that tucked away at the end of this news story is the dispatch that “Demolition cases in China often devolve into violent face-offs between residents and local officials. Self-immolations are common.”
And it isn’t just self-immolations. “In May 2011, a disgruntled farmer in the southeastern city of Fuzhou detonated three homemade bombs near a local government office, killing two people and injuring six.”
It’s a tribute to the law abiding nature of American property owners that these things don’t happen here. But we worry about that when we reflect on incidents of violence triggered by eminent domain takings elsewhere.
The other day we noted Steve Greenhut’s piece on the disaster that failed plans for a professional athletic team stadium brought to Sacramento — click here. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports a similar tale of municipal woe from San Jose whose redevelopment agency paid some $25 million for land it planned to transfer to the As to entice them to move from Oakland. (Justin Scheck, San Jose Strategy to Lure A’s Hits Snag, Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2012). But major projects are risky business, and it all went kablooey when the California legislature abolished redevelopment in that state in the middle of it all.
In an effort to deal with that problem, the San Jose Redevelopment Agency transferred the subject land to “a city run entity, still intending for the As to acquire it.” Nice try. It turns out that the State Controller has something to say about that, and has issued a demand that the city (and other local governments that received land from redevelopment agencies last year) return such land to “successor agencies” the legislature created to dispose of redevelopment agency holdings.
In the meantime, the subject property for which the city redevelopment agency paid $25 million is worth only $6.9 million, assuming it could be rezoned for high-rise or other commercial uses. The city is resisting the State Controller’s demand for a clawback, and it looks like it will take years of wrangling — and litigation, after all it’s California — to work it all out.
In the meantime, the taxpayers are out $25 million, to say nothing of the forgone property tax revenues that the subject property would have produced had it remained in private hands.
Your tax money at work.
Word has reached us that Patti Salkin, Distinguished Professor of Law, and Associate Dean of the Albany Law School, as well as the host of the land-use blog “Law of the Land” has been named Dean of the Touro Law School in New York.
Congratulations, Patti!