The SC Eminent Domain Case - with a Pennsylvania Law View

[Coastie for Truth]

Yesterday's Supreme Court is not the end of the world for home owners and small businesses. In fact, the very home owners and small business owners can use it as a sword.

This was the case when Pennsylvania changed its Eminent Domain Code in response to overwhelming grass roots political pressure.

The was in "hey day" of Grass Roots politics - the late 1960's and the early 1970's. (Remember the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam war?) This was also a localized (in time) period of urban expressway construction.

The political slogan was "No More Rich Folks' Highways Through Poor Folks' Bedrooms." The Governor was a hard line lunch bucket liberal, Milt Shapp, and the issue was I-95 through Philadelphia and I-279 ("East Street Expressway").

The political organization in Pittsburgh was masterful - an African American community activist (Frankie Mae Jetter) and an optometrist (Martie Krause) who was a perennial City Council candidate.

The result - a new Eminent Domain Code with a new definition of "Fair Market Value".

Under the new definition, "Fair Market Value" was defined as the greater of:

1) The Value of the property if put to the contemplated land use after the taking.


--This means that farm land condemned for an Interstate Highway Interchange is value - NOT as farmland -- but as the land for a hotel or hotel-restaurant-gas station complex.

My Dad was the attorney who won that issue for a farmer whose farm land was taken for one of the I-70 interchanges in Fayette County - made the farmer an instant millionaire.


2) A "comparable" home or business in a "comparable" neighborhood.

There is some fancy legislative language, and the original trial court decisions were written by Pittsburgh Trial Court Judge Nick Papadakis, and the subsequent Supreme Court Decisions were written by Judge Papadakis after he was appointed and then elected to the Supreme Court (that was Pennsylvania in the Shapp Days :))

A ""comparable" home in a "comparable" neighborhood" in Pennsylvania does not mean the "fair market value" of that particular house. It means the fair market value of a brand new house, of comparable square footage in the nicer suburb where the homeowner's kids live.

And the eminent domain award includes - by statute - dislocation compensation money, relocation money, and an allowance for "fixing up" (it's called "drapes and rugs and painting money").

There's also a sweetener for sweetener for not appealing the Administrative Law Judge's findings to Commonwealth Court.


Bottom Line
1. Eminent domain for private redevelopment is prohibitively expensive.

2. Private redevelopment for a high end residential facility usually means that existing homeowners get a unit in "fee simple absolute" - no mortgage, an easement "running with the grantee" (i.e., as long as they live there) of no homeowners association assessments -- in the new condo complex.

3. Displaced businesses generally get a new site - again in "fee simple absolute" - no mortgage, fairly close to the old site.

4. The further result is that developers are willing to make their best offer high and early.


Does it work?

Three condos went up in my old neighborhood -- and the displaced homeowners all got free - paid in full, no mortgage, units plus some "walking around money. No eminent domain, no law suits.