I realize the reverse condemnation law was intended on sticking utilities with massive liability for lawsuits, but the federal recognition of this vast blame shifting from those who refuse to maintain proper tree & brush clearance gets me wondering; why couldn’t the same law be used against cities, counties and courts?
The unlawful granting of public property to private individuals to use (and abuse) as they please causes direct harm to the citizens who have to put up with the piles of junk, drug paraphernalia and feces. It locks private citizens out of enjoying rivers and waterways as homeless encampments ‘claim’ it as their property, and insane court decisions back up those claims forbidding the enforcement of basic ideals like ‘no trespassing’, no squatting, no illegal camping, etc.
I’d love to see a series of lawsuits utilizing the reverse condemnation, the drug house confiscation, and 5th takings without compensation slapped against the local, state and federal governments. As the courts have repeatedly ruled, we can not force government to enforce their laws, but as they’ve made tools to punish public and private companies with the most scant relation to the damage, why not use those tools to reclaim our parks & streets?
You first must realize that before the utilities DID NOT "maintain proper tree & brush clearance", they once did so. . . until they were sued back in the 60s and 70s by the armchair conservatives in San Francisco and the other Bay Area cities in the Sierra Club for the unsightly denuding of the areas below their power lines for miles on end (which had the added benefit of creating firebreaks) which, according to the suits, were endangering nature and the wildlife. After multiple losses before liberal Federal judges, PG&E gave up and cut their clear cutting under power line program. The suits were too expensive and the courts ordered them to quit, despite the testimony of fire officials. That testimony was trumped by testimony from academics talking theoretically about the disruption of animal migration paths, and bird nesting, etc. . . with no evidentiary proof.
On drug condemnation. . . the law allows just such seizures now. Rental property used for drug sales, drug houses, etc, can be boarded up for one year depriving the owner of that income for that time. However, that ignores the fact that often the owner may be powerless to evict a drug-selling tenant, yet the law will board up his property regardless of the efforts he may have made to remove the druggy from his property, thus punishing the innocent property owner with no damage to the criminal.
There is also the issue of police corruption. Such property seizures make it too easy to grab innocent person’s property on drummed up drug charges. There was an infamous case in San Diego County a couple decades ago where some cops did a no-knock drug raid on a wealthy rancher’s house, shot and killed the owner, and seized the property as proceeds of drugs. . . but it turned out the cops had planted the drugs found during the raid.