Not a new rapper of course, but I went by an office building last week and it had a big white sign on the outside; with a red circle with a line through it, and it said Eminent Domain Violation.
What is eminent domain?
If I knew, I’d probably fiugre out why it was violated.
thank you.
IANAL, but typically, eminent domain refers to a government’s power to seize private property for public use with “just compensation” to the former owner. Typically, this power will be used when the government needs to build a new road, school, public building, etc. and needs to clear the way. In the US, for example, the government will assert eminent domain, go through the required Fifth Amendment due process for property deprivation, compensate the owner, and take the property.
Here is a reference on eminent domain law based on the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
However, an eminent domain “violation”? I’m not too sure what that means. Maybe it simply indicates that the government has seized that property? Not sure.
Someone’s idea of a joke?
A protest against the building?
An ad?
Was it a ‘real’ sign or just cardboard?
Perhaps it was a protest of the way the owners of the building got their land. In the last few years, many cities have been abusing eminent domain by condeming homes and farms in order to give the land to private developers. The excuse is that they need to do this in order to stimulate private development.
IMHO, that violates the free market in a big way. If Joe Smoh, Inc. needs land for their new office park, they should approach the owners and buy it. If the owners won’t sell, then move on. Seems pretty simple to me…
Evidently there’s been a lot of that going around.
http://www.ij.org/media/private_property/
Yep. In my own little town, there is a *restaurant that has doing good business for a number of years. The City, however, wants the property for some “project” (some hotel boondoggle). They have voted to prepare to seize it (under eminent domain) if the owner does not wish to sell–and so far he has not incentive to, as his business is doing well.
A “Damon’s” if you want to know. They’re a big chain.
It was a big cloth sign on the outside, and also a couple small cardboard ones inside!
Another possibility is that the building was seized through eminent domain because of some health or building code violation that made the building unsafe to enter.
ah, thank you.
That was probably it.
My father is a lawyer and does a lot of litigation work in this regard. That hardly makes me an expert, but I can tell you that he makes pretty good money, so city governments taking people’s property must be pretty commonplace.
As I understand it, the issue is often less that the government takes your property, because no one can dispute they have the right to do it for the ‘public good’, but more that the ‘just compensation’ part is where the problem is. If I am a city government and I take the building where your established business is, you will get paid for the value of the land, and the value of the building, but the question remains as to how much ‘hassle’ money I should pay you. You now need to tell every customer you have where you will be located, that you DIDN’T go out of business, etc. You may have to locate to a completely different area of the country in which case, many of your employees may not go with you.
As an example of one case my father has worked on for a number of years, the city of Oxnard, CA (located about 50 miles south of Santa Barbara, CA) has a metal foundry (Halaco) that is located right on a great surfing beach. The foundry, like any factory, is noisy, produces waste, and is generally “ugly” in appearance. Oxnard for many years was a blue collar crappy town. But when Santa Barbara became “hot” property, and nearby Amgen made millionaires out of lots of folks who now want to buy closeby beachfront property. Santa Barbara is too far away… so…
Long story short…the city has been trying to get Halaco to sell out for years, and somehow the eminent domain issues have been getting blocked, preventing them from getting the property. Part of it may be that this factory employees hundreds of local residents, and if they have to relocate, it will probably be out of state since California is such a green state, no town wants a metal foundry like this…so the blue collar workers are fighting to keep the white collar folks from taking over their town.
How much “hassle money”? That’s easy: Pay off the total income that this business would generate for the life of the owner and the owner’s heirs in perpetuity. This should be Constitutionally enshrined, with an exemption made ONLY in the case that property siezed under “eminent domain” is prohibited from private ownership or private purposes in perpetuam et in eternam. Should any such land be handed over to private developers or altered for their benefit, the seizing agency’s officers shall be executed.
I think your idea is a bit much, at least the execution, but I do beleive that they should only use the land for legitimate public purpose. A school, a road, a fire station, and at that, it should be only if they can’t find another suitable, for sale, location.
I don’t think the land needs to stay in the hands of the government forever, but should be long enough as to not likely benifit anyone in office at the time of the seizure. Say 20 or 30 years.
We’re way off in GD territory here, but my own view (as well as that of the Supreme Court) is that this isn’t “abuse” at all – the local city council (or whatever) has been appointed by the people of the area to decide the most beneficial use of a given piece of property. The fact that you disagree with their choices doesn’t mean there’s abuse going on, it just means you got outvoted. If you don’t like it, lobby the legislative body to change its policies or, failing that, throw the bums out of office. Of course, if there’s someone getting kickbacks, he can be prosecuted for corruption.
–Cliffy
of course it’s not abuse, despite being possibly unconstitutional and definitely against the Preamble :rolleyes:
Personally, if it starts happening around my home, I might run for local council just to condem the homes of the other council members for sale to local developers.
What’s good for the goose, and all that rot…
As to the issue of constitutionality, the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly determined that, so long as either Congress (for a federal taking) or the state (for a taking by a state) legislature has determined that a public use is being served by the taking, the fact that it results in benefit to a private party is irrelevant. See, for example, Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 32-33 (1954) or Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 243 (1984).
Thus, if the City Council decides that it prefers Jones as the owner of the corner barber shop, and uses eminent domain powers to take it away from Smith and give it to Jones, it probably has violated the Constitution. But if it thinks that the building is run down, and that the area needs rejuvenation, and takes the property from Smith, and gives it to Jones who promises to restore it, that would be a valid taking.
This understanding of the meaning of the guarantee of the Fifth Amendment, and the similar guarantee selectively incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment, has been the opinion of the Court since at least 1905.
I am at a total loss to understand how it would “violate” the preamble to the United States Constitution, assuming one could “violate” something that establishes nothing except the reasoning behind the actual laws to follow.
Huh?
The factual bit here is, in all probability, asked and answered.