Real Estate & Property Law

Municipalities are Responsible for Acts of Their Independent Agencies

By Alan Ackerman

Attleboro Redevelopment Authority, an independent agency from the City of Attleboro, with the veiled authority to acquire by eminent domain, simply has no money to pay its judgment.

The property has been taken. The City should be responsible for the activities of the agency it controls.

Sun Chronicle

Boston Attorney George A. McLaughlin III filed the lawsuit Friday in Bristol Superior Court demanding the city or the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority pay the $957,006.87 still owed to his clients more than two years after a jury found that the ARA underpaid them for 13 acres it took in 2005 as it was assembling property for the park.

McLaughlin characterized the failure of the ARA and city to pay his clients as "outrageous."

"They are trying to leave my clients holding the bag," he said. "Enough is enough." The ARA, which has been on the verge of bankruptcy for at least two years, took the land by eminent domain and paid only $207,000 for it, arguing it was undevelopable. But a jury in 2008 saw it differently and awarded landowners Therese Anderson and Tamara Cullaz of Mansfield an additional $893,000, plus $124,006.87 in interest.

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on December 14, 2010 (boomark / email).