Supreme Court OK's seizure of personal property

[elemnopee]

I'm not sure how fair market value differs from actual market rate. 

Sure, someone may underprice their home, or they may overprice it.  The trick is to first establish what someone would actually pay for it.

Where I live houses go for 30-50,000 over asking price, easily.

If your mortgage was locked in at a low interest rate, this could also really screw you.

[BoscoBreaux]

I think this is horrible. A huge step backward for the rights of private citizens.

Utterly unfathomable. What policy purpose does this serve OTHER than to make those with money and power MORE POWERFUL? I, too, am shocked I agree with Scalia, but I am more shocked that Scalia didn't yet again invent constitutional protections for corporations and the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Maybe he had a change of heart.

[jwilcox1024]

Do they have to give a fair market rate, or the actual market rate.  

Houses that go on the market in many areas get offers well above the asking price, so the actual market rate is higher than anticipated.

I'm nervous that city councils are going to plow through undesirable, low-income housing and sell the land to developers to build giant high-rise condiminiums.  

I'm not sure how fair market value differs from actual market rate. 

Sure, someone may underprice their home, or they may overprice it.  The trick is to first establish what someone would actually pay for it.

As people much smarter than I have pointed out elsewhere the idea that fair/market rate is the same as just compensation in situations like this is an oversimplication. There is a cost in time and money to sell a home. You have to look for a new place to live, pay the closing costs associated with the new home, pack and move all your belongings, etc. When you are voluntarily moving you take upon the burden of those costs because you value what you are getting in return more. This clearly is not the case when eminent domain is involved.

The above also fails to factor in the emotional investment you have in your home -- my home may only be worth $150,000, but it might take $300,000 to get me to move voluntarily because of my emotional attachment. Perhaps we need a system like that in torts where you are compensated both for your (full) economic loss and your emotional loss if you can demonstrate one. (such as the woman in Kelo who has lived in one of the homes for her entire life of 80+ years)

[ViagraSaint]

if the city declares your residential property commercial property before seizing, any idea how the value is affected? 

for commercial, the cashflow/amount of income the property brings in is a factor and for most residential homes this is zero.

[Faure]

I am really curious to see what kind of compensation people receive. Does anyone have any idea of what the New London folks were offered?

[sublimation]

according to a program on npr this morning, the compensation received is at the 'government issued rate' (?), which, according to the expert guest, is sig. lower than real market value.

[Faure]

That sucks! I think you should be compensated for higher than market value and have all your taxes etc... waived when purchasing another home. Interesting to see the SCOTUS vote the way they did.

[Lenny]

Say what you will, but I want to at least throw it out there that maybe you should wait until at least you've been at law school for a bit before you so readily criticize a Supreme Court ruling.  It is undeniable that yes, this ruling sucks for the plaintiffs in this actual case and for people who may become the subject of an aggressive city in the future.  But, the opinions themselves show that this case was about a lot more than fair and unfair.  It was, to a large degree, about precedent.  Some pretty well-entrenched precedent existed that logically pointed to this outcome, as troubling as that may have been for the 5 Justice majority.  I'm sure they weren't sitting around saying "Aha, I'm going to rule this way because I like shopping malls better than poor people."  They looked at the precedent and said "well, this is how the cookie crumbles unless we completely change course on this issue."  With so much course changing occuring in other recent Supreme Court opinions, I am sure these Justices are a little tired of the "activist" word.  This case also had a lot to do with deference.  Those of you that are about to go to law school will learn about the significant deference that courts are supposed to give to decisions made by other branches of government that have the authority and expertise needed to make those decisions.  It isn't a court's job to second-guess everything that the executive or legislative branches do.  Instead, the court's sole role is to weigh in on the legality of a decision, not the wisdom.  At the Supreme Court level, their job is to determine the constitutionality of a decision, and the Constitution cuts a pretty broad swath of permissible actions, especially in the economic arena.

Though I usually tend to side with the O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist group, I think the majority got this one right.  The dissent is "correct" when it says that this opens the door to many abusive practices, but its slippery-slope logic is a fallacy and the political process will, theoretically, keep the local governments in check.

[HippieLawChick]

Lenny:  What you didn't consider is that perhaps people were responding to their opinions of this decision as CITIZENS of this country.  We are not only future lawyers, but US Citizens and have the right to express an opinion based on perceived outcomes of the decision...not the legal theories involved.  In the law school class I sat in on, the professor asked the students what they thought a "good" decision would be and how they thought the Court could have arrived at it. Law School isn't just about analyzing the decision made, but other possible ones. 

[Lenny]

Oh, ok.  Thanks for the lesson, Hippie.  I totally stand corrected...

First, I never brought into question your "right" to dislike the outcome.  Complain away.  You're completely right that, as I mentioned, this result sucks, potentially for a lot of people.  But, to what end does that statement arrive?  Sitting there and saying "man, this is bad" is nothing but stating a truism, much like you would find in many sociology classes - "disproportionately low access to opportunity for minorities is a bad thing"  "yeah, it is, what should we do about it?"  "whoa whoa whoa, I'm a sociology major, I don't fix problems, I just point them out - I say we just blame someone and leave it at that."  The point is, its all fine and good to point out the downsides, but where does that get us if that is all that happens?  If you want to start a grass roots campaign to "amend" the Fifth Amendment, go right ahead and I would probably support it, but criticism without suggestion or resolution doesn't get me very far.

Second, I was responding more to the people who had stated that the Supreme Court made the wrong decision legally, ignoring until now those that assailed the decision from a societal standpoint.

Third, regarding your ONE all-enlightening class that you sat in on, it is a very common thing for professors to ask what a possible alternative holding would be in a given case.  This question implies the caveat "that would be in accordance with the current status of the law" when it asks for possible alternative holdings.  The point of my previous post was that I don't think there was a strong alternative holding that would not require a marked change of course in Fifth Amendment takings law.  There, of course, were some possible alternative rulings, as Justice O'Connor points out in her dissent, the bright-line blight/commercial improvement test being an example.  But, I agree with the majority that many of these alternatives were unworkable in practice.