SECTION NEWS

New Committee on Condemnation Law Formed

The Section of State and Local Government Law has formed a new Committee on Condemnation Law. The Committee will focus on a topic of increasing importance to elected officials, planners, real estate developers, and their legal counsel.

The exercise of government’s power of eminent domain has come into the limelight for several reasons. Pressures for “smart growth” will require some new pubic facilities, such as mass transit lines. Depleted municipal coffers cause local officials to seek ways to increase the collection of real estate and sales taxes in sometimes underutilized commercial areas. This sometimes has included condemnation of “blighted” parcels, with subsequent resale to private redevelopers. In egregious cases, small firms have convinced courts that agencies have condemned their land in order to resell it to competitors or tenants. Both federal and state courts have held that some exercises of eminent domain have been for private use, as opposed to the public use or benefit required by the federal and state constitutions.

Similarly, some property owners have complained that they were given insufficient notice of condemnations that took, or affected, their property.

Among the more technical issues the Committee on Condemnation Law plans to consider are whether proper techniques are being used to calculate condemnation awards, especially in cases where less than the entire parcel is condemned, or where specialized property rights apart from ownership of land itself are taken.

The new Committee is co-chaired by Darius Dynkowski. His firm, Ackerman & Ackerman, P.C., of Troy, Michigan, specializes in eminent domain litigation. The other co-chair is Steven J. Eagle, a professor of law at George Mason University, in Arlington, Virginia. He specializes in “regulatory takings,” a field that considers when stringent regulations of property go over the line and become covert condemnations.

The new co-chairs welcome suggestions from, and the involvement of, Section members. They can be contacted at dynkowski@sbcglobal.net or seagle@gmu.edu.