Posts Tagged ‘eminent domain’

Constitutional law roundup

Cato-intensive edition:

September 16 roundup

  • House Judiciary holds hearing on asbestos-claim fraud and abuse, with Prof. Brickman headlining [Main Justice, Legal NewsLine, WSJ law blog, PoL, Brickman testimony]
  • Endangered species habitat in Nevada: “Elko County wants end to 15-year-old trout case” [AP]
  • “Why is the Eastern District of Texas home to so many patent trolls?” [Ted Frank/PoL, more] Tech giants say multi-defendant patent suits place them at disadvantage [WSJ Law Blog] Plus: “Patent company has big case, no office” [John O’Brien, Legal NewsLine]
  • Lawsuit settlement and the lizard brain [Popehat]
  • “U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Looks Into Eminent Domain Abuses” [Kanner, Somin] U.K.: “Squatters could be good for us all, says judge in empty homes ruling” [Telegraph]
  • Madison mob silences Roger Clegg at news conference where he releases new study of UW race bias [ABA Journal, Althouse]
  • Life in Australia: “Another motorized-beer-cooler DUI” [Lowering the Bar]

In Texas, free speech wins a round

My new post at Cato at Liberty celebrates investigative journalist Carla Main’s substantial victory at a Texas appeals court against a Dallas developer who didn’t like what she’d written about him in her critique of eminent domain, Bulldozed. Ted at Point of Law rounds up more links and reactions and points out that Texas is fortunate to have a relatively strong “anti-SLAPP” law protecting those who speak out on public issues from intimidation through litigation.

Unfortunately, as Ted writes, “there are dozens of other states where those who criticize the rich face tremendous risk of meritless libel suits to shut down their free speech rights.” For example, to its shame, the state of Pennsylvania has a desperately weak anti-SLAPP law which per Harvard’s Citizen Media Law Project “only applies to those petitioning the government over environmental issues.” It’s past time for lawmakers in Harrisburg and other state capitols to take needed legislative action to protect free speech from the silencing threat of litigation.

P.S. Jacob Sullum has this to say:

In our system of justice, rich people with thin skins don’t need any evidence to drag their critics into an expensive, time-consuming, anxiety-provoking legal process that lasts for years. For any journalist who has ever wondered whether he could be sued over something he wrote that reflected badly on someone (which some of us do several times a day), the answer is yes: You can be sued over anything. The suit may not be legally successful, but if the plaintiff’s goal is to punish you for the offense you caused him and make you (and everyone else) think twice before writing about him again, he wins whether or not he ultimately can prevail in court.

How very true.

Jezebel, the Dodgers and eminent domain

Gideon Kanner recalls how the forcible 1950s displacement of a modest Mexican community made way eventually (after the dropping of a public housing scheme) for the construction of L.A.’s baseball stadium. Some of the residents resisted: “Their principled fight became a footnote in the wretched history of eminent domain law which holds that once a condemnor acquires title to private property by eminent domain, it is not bound to put it to the ‘public’ uses for which it was taken.” [“The Curse of Chavez Ravine“]

In other eminent domain news, voters in the Indian state of West Bengal have ousted the long-ruling Communist party; a rival party “began to gain momentum when angry farmers erupted in protest against the Communist government in 2007 and 2008 after it seized farmland to set up an automobile factory.”