Thursday, June 23, 2005

NPR : Development Trumps Property, Says High Court

This probably bothers me more than anything I've seen out of the High Court in years. The Supreme Court has basically ruled that if Wal-Mart wants your land and can't buy you out, they can get the city/state to TAKE your land from you and sell it to Wal-Mart for their own use. That is OUTRAGEOUS!

A divided Supreme Court rules that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for economic development. The 5-4 decision was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes were due to be demolished to make way for an office complex.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw a similar article about the same subject but I saw no mention of Walmart in either article. Are you just picking any store or do you have information that it is Walmart?

Note: I did not listen to the show so i did not hear if Walmart was specificly mentioned.

Madcap

Polly said...

sorry for any confusion. Wal-Mart is NOT the company doing this (here in this case). my mentioning 'Wal-Mart' was simply to pick, at random, a corporation for my hypothetical. That being said, Wal-Mart has been successful in some instances when it came to twisting zoning law, and in other instances, it was remarkably UN-successful in some high profile cases.

Personally, i try not to shop at Wal-Mart if i can help it. that usually means i'll go there if it is after hours.

Polly said...

here is a GREAT article about it by my favorite columnist, Dahlia Lithwick:

http://www.slate.com/id/2121410/entry/2121470/

and here's the case itself if you wanna see it in particular:

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/23jun20051201/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf/04-108.pdf