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Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Law - U.S. told to pay for Kentucky land it seized

The Louisville Courier Journal reports today, in a lengthy story by James Malone:

Fearing coastal attacks during the early fever pitch of World War II, the Army took 36,000 acres of rolling farmland in Western Kentucky's Union and Webster counties to build Camp Breckinridge in 1942 to train soldiers.

Hundreds of families had to leave, mistakenly believing they might be allowed to buy back their property someday.

Now a federal judge has ruled that about 1,000 landowners and descendants are due $32 million in profits that the government made in 1965 by selling the land's mineral rights to oil, coal and power companies. * * *

Friday's ruling by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Susan Braden in Washington, D.C., is the result of five decades of perseverance by landowners and their heirs to get fair compensation for their property.

The Justice Department, which defended the government, is reviewing the decision and will be discussing the appropriate next steps, spokesman Ben Porritt said. Checks may not be passed out anytime soon.

The government can appeal the April 1 ruling. And Braden has asked lawyers for the landowners and government for briefs within 60 days to recommend ways to execute the judgment and distribute the money, according to Stephen Pitt, the Louisville lawyer who has represented the landowners.

Moreover, Pitt said he did not know whether the $32 million would be adjusted for inflation and would include interest. * * *

[T]he land was declared surplus property after the Korean War, and the government sold it off in large tracts that average farmers could not afford, according to court records and exhibits. And it made $32 million in extra profit by selling mineral rights separately.

Former landowners who complained said the message to them was simple: tough luck.

The first civil suit was filed in 1965, but a federal judge ruled against the landowners after a trial. When sales of surplus property began, government officials assured members of Congress that the property would be sold off in tracts similar in size to the tracts it acquired, court record show.

Maureen Hayden of the Evansville Courier& Press also has a story on the ruling. Some quotes:
The ruling, issued late last week by U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Susan Braden, says the federal government "unjustly profited" from the sale of 36,000 acres in farmland condemned in 1942 to make way for the Camp Breckinridge military installation during World War II.

Braden ruled on the side of the 1,000-plus plaintiffs who contended the federal government forced their families off their farmland by purchasing the land at rock-bottom prices with the promise the families could buy the property back after the war was over. Most families were given 30 days to leave their homes and many weren't paid until after the war, Braden notes in her ruling. Braden also notes how the federal government hung onto the land, which it bought for a total of $3.2 million in 1942, and resold it to oil, gas and coal developers for more than $35 million in 1965. That decision, she ruled, allowed the government to "unjustly profit" at the expense of hundreds of landowners whose farms had been in their families for generations. * * *

In her ruling, Braden found that initially both the government land agents and the property owners mistakenly undervalued the property's worth back in 1942. But Braden also noted that the federal government found out after the war just how rich the land was in coal, oil and gas.

In her ruling, Braden said government agents then made secret deals with oil, gas and coal companies, offering some of most mineral-rich land through a private auction, closed to the public. In her ruling, Braden also chastises U.S. Department of Justice lawyers for "sandbagging" the lawsuit, brought by descendants of the property owners in 1965, after much of the property was sold. Braden also noted a number of the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit - many who were children of farmers forced to sell their land - are now dead.

In her ruling, Braden also notes how the government lost or misplaced documents along the way, and went through a revolving door of lawyers, whose replacements delayed the case even longer. She also chastises Justice Department lawyers for their attempts to quash the taped depositions of some of the original landowners, now dead. Justice Department lawyers argued those depositions, many taken in 1995, shouldn't have been allowed in the case because the people being deposed were elderly, and therefore incompetent to give an accurate accounting of events that had occurred 50 years earlier. Braden rejected that argument, noting in her ruling that she found the depositions clear and cogent.

Here is the 81-page opinion, LAND GRANTORS IN HENDERSON, UNION, and WEBSTER COUNTIES, KENTUCKY and THEIR HEIRS, v. THE UNITED STATES.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 6, 2005 08:39 AM
Posted to General Law Related