Are you involved in an eminent domain battle to keep your property from being wrongfully seized or confiscated by a governmental agency? Eminent Domain can best be explained as: the inherent power possessed by the state over all property within the state, to seize for any supposedly “public reason”, a citizen’s private property, or rights in private property, without the owner’s consent, either for its own use or by delegation to third parties. Specifically, this power is to appropriate private property for a “public use”.

Has Your Property Been Wrongly Seized? The U.S. Supreme Court has given the “Public Use” requirement an expansive interpretation which unfortunately has led to many abuses by various governmental delegates. In a continued effort to generate tax revenues, many local government agencies have outraged citizens with a blatant disregard for the protections provided under the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court has long up-held the principle that one is wrongfully deprived of his property in violation of the law if a State takes the property for any reason other than a “public use”. Some municipalities have illegally expanded their scope to include so-called economic redevelopment projects that use eminent domain seizures to enable new commercial development, on the theory that the new owners will put the land taken to more lucrative uses that are to generate more tax revenues, or on the theory of improving the community.

The effects of eminent domain may cause the following:

	Social Repercussion
	Economic Consequences
	Political Implications

Furthermore, the Fifth Amendment contains a provision that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. This provision was recognized and affirmed in the 1876 U.S. Supreme Court case Kohl v. United States. With the adaptation of the Fourteenth Amendment, similar provisions were imposed upon states, whereby the Fifth Amendment applied to federal jurisdiction.

The controversy is further driven because displaced home-owners and businesses are not fully compensated for their demonstrable economic losses, which are sometimes deemed non-compensable. This is particularly disturbing in cases where business properties are taken and the owners are not compensated for lost business, and the land taken is turned over to another business at no cost.