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October 10, 2007
Eminent domain appeal faces engaged but skeptical panel
Atlantic Yards Report
Norman Oder filed the only blow-by-blow account of yesterday's oral arguments before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the federal eminent domain suit, including a stunning revelation that one judge on the panel once expressed support for Atlantic Yards:
Plaintiffs appealing the dismissal of the Atlantic Yards eminent domain case this morning encountered an engaged but skeptical panel of three Second Circuit appellate court judges, who let the argument extend for an hour—well more than the initial time allotted—as more than 60 people looked on in the Lower Manhattan courtroom.
The plaintiffs—13 residential and commercial tenants and property owners—are challenging U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis’s dismissal of the case, as he ruled that the public purposes associated with the project—among them subsidized housing, blight removal, new transit facilities, and a sports facility—trumped any inquiry into the legitimacy of the sequence.
Then again, they gave plaintiffs’ attorney Matthew Brinckerhoff (right) a lot of time to explain his argument that the sequence behind Atlantic Yards—in which the project was promised to a private developer without any other bids—differed from that in the cases the Supreme Court had upheld eminent domain, and that Garaufis's ruling should be reversed so the case can actually go forward.
...
And while the judges did not press attorney Preeta Bansal (right), representing the Empire State Development Corporation and other defendants, as closely as they did Brinckerhoff, they did question her somewhat startling contention that, even if there were illicit motive in the case, as long as the project results in some public use, “that’s the end of the inquiry.” (The other defendants include Mayor Mike Bloomberg, former Gov. George Pataki, and Forest City Ratner.)
Click here to read the entire article.
Posted by lumi at October 10, 2007 7:54 AM