The property owner/appellant raised a whole bunch of legal issues in City of Kansas City v. Powell, No. WD 76861 (Oct. 7, 2014), a case decided by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District.
The city slated Ms. Powell's house for condemnation because it wanted to build a new police station and crime lab. The court took 28 pages to reject each of Powell's arguments on appeal, but what comes through between the lines is that she didn't quite behave:
On September 9, 2012, a special process server attempted to serve Powell at 2718 Brooklyn Avenue with a summons for the condemnation hearing. The residence at 2718 Brooklyn belonged to Powell‟s mother, but at the time, the City believed Powell to reside there as well, based upon its perception that 2611 Brooklyn was in a state of rehabilitation and uninhabitable. A woman answered the door at 2718 Brooklyn and indicated that Powell was not there. The process server was later shown a picture of Powell and believed the woman he encountered to have been Powell, so he returned to 2718 Brooklyn and spoke with Powell‟s mother, who refused to accept service on Powell‟s behalf. The process server advised Powell‟s mother that he was leaving the papers with her, and he left them on the porch of the home. The City also published notice of the condemnation hearing in a local newspaper.Powell sought to quash the service attempted at 2718 Brooklyn. The court granted Powell‟s motion, but determined nevertheless that Powell had been adequately served through publication.
Slip op. at 4-5 (footnote omitted).
Now, we're not saying that an owner whose property is being seized against her will has any obligation to play nice. Indeed, if any party in an eminent domain action has such an obligation, it is the condemnor: owners have done nothing wrong, committed no crime, have not been negligent; they are only defendants because someone else wants their property.
But here's a practical lesson to be learned from Powell: it's human nature for a court to be influenced by whether a party behaved, and it appears to us that the court didn't go out of its way to accept the owner's arguments.
City of Kansas City v. Powell, No. WD 76861 (Missouri App., W.D. Oct. 7, 2014)
