Real Estate & Property Law

Materials And Links From The Webconference "Eminent Domain After Kelo"

By Robert Thomas (inversecondemnation.com)

Here are the slides that I used and links to the cases I discussed in "The Whacky and Wonderful World of Eminent Domain After Kelo."

My presentation was entitled "Schlimmbesserung - Eminent Domain for Redevelopment." Schlimmbesserung is one of those wonderful German compound words that have no direct translation into English, and means "worsening by improvement." That term summed up for me how several of the more notorious efforts to use eminent domain in redevelopment efforts have fared (e.g., Poletown, Kelo). Professor Gideon Kanner recently posted some thoughts on "redevelopment blunders" here.

Joining me on the panel was Andrew W. Schwartz, a partner in San Francisco's Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, who suggested that redevelopment was good, and that eminent domain was a necessary part of the process when market forces break down, or there are holdouts. The session was moderated by John Clapp, Ph.D. of the UConn Center for Real Estate, and Michele Maresca, a land use attorney at Robinson and Cole in Hartford.

I'm usually reluctant to post slides from presentations without the accompanying narration, but we received quite a few requests, so here you go. Some of the slides lack context, but I'll bet you get the drift in most of them. Links to the cases below the window.

download slides from the 10-21-2010 webconference

Eminent Domain After Kelo

View more presentations from inversecondemnation.

Here are links to the cases I mentioned (and some which I did not have time to discuss, but wish I did):

• Uptown Holdings, LLC v. City of New York, No. 2882 (Oct. 12, 2010) (notable for Judge Catterson's concurring opinion: "[T]here is no longer any judicial oversight of eminent domain proceedings [in New York]."

• 49 Wb, LLC v. Village of Haverstraw, 44 A.D.3d 226 (2007), a case in which the Appellate Division invalidated a taking because the condemnor's "sole purpose [was] assisting private entities by means of condemnation."

• The cert petition in Tuck-It-Away, Inc. v. New York State Urban Dev. Corp., which seeks U.S. Supreme Court review of the New York Court of Appeals' decision in the Columbia "blight" case, Kaur v. New York State Urban Development Corp., No. 125 (June 24, 2010).

• County of Hawaii v. C & J Coupe Family Ltd. P?ship, 198 P.3d 615 (Haw. 2008) - the Kelo majority opinion requires a trial court to take seriously a property owner?s claim that the government?s proffered reasons for condemning private property is really just a pretext hiding private benefits

This seminar was part of the 2010 Real Estate Teleconference Series sponsored by the Counselors of Real Estate, the University of Connecticut, and Robinson & Cole.

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on October 22, 2010 (boomark / email).