Today in AY: FCR Rally Panned; Amicus Brief Filed
Battles over Atlantic Yards’ PR face and legal validity continue to rage. On the image front, Daily News sports columnist Michael O’Keefe has a withering piece about the rally Forest City Ratner sponsored at Borough Hall last week in order to demonstrate support for Atlantic Yards. O’Keefe says the developer’s statement that 3,500 supporters showed…
Battles over Atlantic Yards’ PR face and legal validity continue to rage. On the image front, Daily News sports columnist Michael O’Keefe has a withering piece about the rally Forest City Ratner sponsored at Borough Hall last week in order to demonstrate support for Atlantic Yards. O’Keefe says the developer’s statement that 3,500 supporters showed up for the event “seemed extremely optimistic” and that “the speakers at the rally sounded like Hillary Clinton in the waning weeks of her failed presidential campaign: angry and frustrated, stunned at the prospect of defeat when they once expected a slam dunk.” The lawsuit-plagued project recently got its latest legal challenge in the form of an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, according to an article in today’s Sun. Public-interest firm Institute for Justice, which challenged the use of eminent domain in Kelo v. City of New London, filed the brief on the grounds that it wants the Supreme Court to use it “to clarify how much leeway courts still have to halt the use of eminent domain.” It’s unclear whether the high court will hear the case, which is brought by residents in the Atlantic Yards footprint who are supposed to be booted from their properties in order for the project to proceed.
Bruce Ratner’s Brooklyn Day a Dud [NY Daily News]
Prominent Law Firm Urges Atlantic Yards Development Be Stopped [NY Sun]
Photo by Atlantic Yards Webcam.
bxgirl – you clearly know nothing about supreme court practice and, the what, you also clearly are clueless on this score. unless the plaintiffs can say while this case is different from kelo (and they can’t), cert will be denied straight up, probably within months. the conservative supremes want to preserve the power of the states (which have tons of latitude with eminent domain), and minimize activist courts from legislating from the bench. that’s why they did what they did in kelo, despite that property rights were concerned, and there isn’t anything compelling enough or different enough about AY for them to make a breach from such recent precedent.
i agree that AY is far from a done deal, but its death is far more likely to come from a a blow from the invisible hand of capitalism than from the supremes’ musty old gavel.
11:00 – it is 1000% irrelevant if their are “important issues” at stake – the question is whether the SCt is going to hear the case – there are important issues in virtually every case that is petitioned to the SCt (even if just to the litigants) – but the SCt only hears a tiny fraction.
The SCt will wait (years or forever) to see how the Kelo case is interpreted by lower courts and then if interpretations end up conflicting or if the decisions unforseen issues – maybe the issue will be revisited. But this case does not change the manner in which the SCt handles hearing cases, and unless there was some major interpretive problem, the SCt. does not hear the same case year after year. And no well written brief is going to change that.
The uninformed here is you.
bxgl, do you honestly equate such important issues as abortion, human rights, gay marriage, etc. with use of eminent domain? ha! ha! do a nexus database search for the past six months and see how many stories about eminent domain turn up as compared to genuine issues like global warming, price of oil, the war in iraq, etc. There is, has never been, and never will be an “uproar” over eminent domain loud enough to make the supreme court hear this case. and please don’t mention the flurry of legislation that resulted from kelo – that is most definitely not enough to advance the case that we are discussing here.
11:00, one can read the briefs until the end of all days, but that still won’t make the supreme court hear this case. That, my friend, is reality, not blogjecture.
The Supreme Court petition briefs are all here:
http://www.dddb.net/php/reading/legal/eminentdomain
You can decide on your own if there is an important issue at stake being well argued by both sides. Without reading the briefs the above comments are nothing more than uninformed, comment section blogjecture.
“what- I don’t always agree with you but you are so right. do you think Ratner ever intended to build the AY at all? Didn’t it just start out as an arena?”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
The What
Someday this war is gonna end…
BxGrl – ED is not abortion (ED is specifically listed in the constitution, the right to privacy is not) and even so – the SCt doesnt hear abortion cases every 3years especially those with the EXACT same fact pattern.
This is simply a delay tactic.
what- I don’t always agree with you but you are so right. do you think Ratner ever intended to build the AY at all? Didn’t it just start out as an arena?
I know Ratner is a very happy man. It will take about 3 years for that Amicus Brief to hit the Supremes. He has his “Exit Strategy ” in place. When, not if the crash is underway he will say “due to legal and financial turmoil we cannot complete Atlantic Yards”. LMMFAO!
Prudential Center in Newark, NJ is waiting with open arms..
http://www.prucenter.com/ Home of the Newark NJ NETS!
Ya’ll got played for suckers!
The What (How much is your Condo worth?}
Someday this war is gonna end
9:34- It’s far from clear that the Supreme Court will not hear the case because although the issue was addressed in Kelo, there was a huge uproar, and if you have ever followed the Supreme Court you would see how issues “resolved” in one case can and will be brought up again in a different way. the Abortion debate is a perfect example. So is busing and equal rights registration, so is the issue of gay marriage. add to the mix the politicized atmosphere of the court which now leans heavily- way way too heavily- to the right,I think its safe to say that the eminent domain issue is far from over.
Also remember the states have leeway in how they allow eminent domain to be used. A lot of people would have been far less upset with the project if Ratner hadn’t held the threat of eminent domain over their heads. Unnecessary, off-putting and in view of everything, nothing more than a flexing of muscles (no- not the brain, the other one). At this point in time without having even filed for its use, people have been displaced from their homes, businesses upended, jobs lost. No- I don’t think the issue is dead at all.