Subject: Power Lines and Fairness in court Costs (McCord).
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 202732 -0500
From: Roy Beavers
To: guru
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..............From EMF-L.............
Nancy's message below is in response to our latest message on the WEBSITE (Current
Messages file)........ If you haven;t seen it already, you should check it
out........guru......
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Eminent Domain
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 21:13:37 -0400
From: "Nancy McCord"
Reply-To: "Nancy McCord"
To:
Dear Roy, I am delighted you included such a clear description of the "compensation
problems" and unbelievable unfairness, facing property owners who find a powerline
corridor crossing their land. In Virginia and 27 other states the laws remain as they
were in the 20' and 30's. However, 22 states have fairly recently passed reforms, that
are more protective of property owners and include some form of "litigation
reimbursement.." In 14 states, if the property owner prevails in court proving that the
condemnor did not offer a fair price, then the condemnor must pay property owner's
litigation costs, including attorney fees. In 8 states, if the property owner prevails,
the judge can order the condemnor to pay the property owner's litigation expenses. In
trying to change Virginia's law we are fighting not only the power companies, who use
eminent domain to take property, but lobbying by the highway department and the towns and
municipalities as well. Needless to say this is an up hill battle but the issue is still
alive in the legislature which means there is hope. I sincerely thank you for your support
and hope that others who read about this issue and are being offered unfair prices for the
damage powerlines do their property, and live in the states that have not reformed their
laws, will take action. I am 57 years old and love this country and until I experienced
the injustice myself, would not have believed it possible in America, that a company could
take private property for the public good and do so without paying "just compensation." I
do not oppose the government's use of eminent domain, in fact I recognize and support its
importance to a society. I just believe that when private property is taken for the
public good, the person making this sacrifice should be compensated fairly. The costs
should be spread evenly over the society that will benefit or in the case of a public,
for profit corporation, a fair purchase price should be simply a cost of doing business.
It is not fair for that small group of citizens who have the project crossing their
land,to bear an inordinate share of the burden for a project that will benefit all. I do
not mean to get on my soap box for I know the focus of your site is EMFs but I just wanted
to follow up on your note and again thank you. Nancy
--------------8C6D2BEDACED3231D09F0941
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
..............From EMF-L.............
Nancy's message below is in response to our latest message on the WEBSITE
(Current
Messages file)........ If you haven;t seen it already, you should check
it out........guru......
-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: |
Eminent Domain |
| Date: |
Tue, 12 Sep 2000 21:13:37 -0400 |
| From: |
"Nancy McCord" <nbmccord@adelphia.net> |
| Reply-To: |
"Nancy McCord" <nbmccord@adelphia.net> |
| To: |
<roy@emfguru.com> |
Dear Roy, I
am delighted you included such a clear description of the "compensation
problems" and unbelievable unfairness, facing property owners who find
a powerline corridor crossing their land. In Virginia and 27 other
states the laws remain as they were in the 20' and 30's. However,
22 states have fairly recently passed reforms, that are more protective
of property owners and include some form of "litigation reimbursement.."
In 14 states, if the property owner prevails in court proving that the
condemnor did not offer a fair price, then the condemnor must pay property
owner's litigation costs, including attorney fees. In 8 states, if
the property owner prevails, the judge can order the condemnor to pay the
property owner's litigation expenses. In
trying to change Virginia's law we are fighting not only the power companies,
who use eminent domain to take property, but lobbying by the highway department
and the towns and municipalities as well. Needless to say this is
an up hill battle but the issue is still alive in the legislature
which means there is hope. I
sincerely thank you for your support and hope that others who read about
this issue and are being offered unfair prices for the damage powerlines
do their property, and live in the states that have not reformed their
laws, will take action. I
am 57 years old and love this country and until I experienced the injustice
myself, would not have believed it possible in America, that a company
could take private property for the public good and do so without paying
"just compensation." I do not oppose the government's use of eminent
domain, in fact I recognize and support its importance to a society.
I just believe that when private property is taken for the public
good, the person making this sacrifice should be compensated fairly.
The costs should be spread evenly over the society that will benefit
or in the case of a public, for profit corporation, a fair purchase price
should be simply a cost of doing business. It is not fair for that
small group of citizens who have the project crossing their land,to
bear an inordinate share of the burden for a project that will benefit
all. I do
not mean to get on my soap box for I know the focus of your site is EMFs
but I just wanted to follow up on your note and again thank you. Nancy
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Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com