Hi,

For those of you fighting eminent domain (a tool used in Scranton and so many other cities to destory historic fabric of communities) Mother Jones has a good article in the new issue.

I encourage you to buy MoJo, but if you want to read it online, go to this link. There are also two other related articles int he sub menu.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/01/01_407.html

Rob

Most cases of eminent domain are of the type described in Mother Jones, but I'm still trying to find out if it has ever been used the other way, to save things that a private owner wants to destroy.

A few years ago in Vermont, an eccentric man owned some horses and several vintage Cadillacs. His will specified that the horses be killed and the Cadillacs crushed upon his death. Some animal rights advocates went to court and spared the horses, but I never heard any more about the cars.

I also recall reading some years ago of a very large, old tree down south somewhere that the elderly lady owner wanted cut down, despite the fact it was still healthy. As it was on a main street and considered an important part of the town's history, a group mounted a fight to save the tree, essentially by an eminent domain move. Again, I never heard any more of how the case came out. Does anyone here know?

Eminent domain can only be invoked to condemn real property (land), not personal property.

As to the big oak tree, there have been several such incidents. The one you may be thinking of occurred in south Alabama, where a property owner wanted to remove a large live oak (locally referred to as the "Evangeline Oak" after the poem's story) which sat at the intersection of two country roads. (The owner may have wanted to sell the land for housing - I can't recall now.) There was a lot of public opinion against the move, so one night the owner had someone girdle the tree with a chain saw to kill it. The resulting hue and cry led to the owner allowing a rescue group to build a shelter around the trunk, fill the gouge with some sort of sap-conveying compound, in an effort to save the tree.

(We happened to be in the area about a year afterwards visiting a friend and saw it - quite an operation. I don't recall if the tree eventually recovered.)

But that's public pressure, not eminent domain. Eminent Domain is a specific legal principle that can only be invoked by government (or an entity the government has granted eminent domain, like a power company or a railroad) for specific outcomes that benefit the public good (like building roads, transmission lines or tracks).

JAC