Justices Decline to Take Up New Eminent Domain Case
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday bypassed an opportunity to revisit or limit its much-disputed 2005 ruling that upheld governmental power to use eminent domain to foster economic development. Without comment, the justices declined to hear a case from Port Chester in Westchester County, N.Y., that challenged the village’s use of eminent domain in a dispute between a property owner and a private company designated as the developer of a run-down 27-acre urban renewal area. The redevelopment plan, adopted by Port Chester in 1999, envisioned a retail area that would include a drugstore. In 2002, the developer, G & S Port Chester LLC, announced that a Walgreens store would be part of the project. But Bart Didden, the owner of the parcel where the store was to sit, had by that time separately entered into a lease with a competing drugstore chain, CVS. After negotiations between Mr. Didden and G & S Port Chester failed, the village sided with its developer and notified the property owner that his half-acre parcel would be taken by eminent domain and made available for the developer’s use. Mr. Didden and his business partner, Domenick Bologna, brought a lawsuit in 2004 arguing that Port Chester’s condemnation of the property was not for a true “public use,” the phrase that identifies the constitutionally permissible use of the eminent domain power, but rather for the private financial benefit of the developer. The lawsuit accused Gregg Wasser, G & S Port Chester’s owner, of having improperly demanded a financial stake in the plan for the CVS store as the price for permission to proceed with it. Both the Federal District Court in Manhattan and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed the lawsuit. More : nytimes.com |