The last two cert-stage briefs have been filed in a case we've been following for a while (since it was decided by the Colorado Court of Appeals).
In Carousel Farms Metro. Dist. v. Woodcrest Homes, Inc., 444 P.3d 802 (Colo. App. 2017), the appeals court invalidated an attempt to exercise eminent domain to take property which the owner had refused to sell to developer Carousel Farms. Although the Carousel Farms Metropolitan District couldn't point to a present public use or benefit from the taking, it asserted that in the future the public would benefit from the condemnation because if Carousel Farms were allowed to develop its property in accordance with its agreement with the town, the public would receive new infrastructure such as roads and sewers. The trial court upheld the taking, but the court of appeals reversed. The real purpose of the taking was to facilitate the developer's compliance with its agreement with the town, and speculative future benefits are not enough to overcome the true purpose of the taking.
Unfortunately, the court of appeals' ruling didn't hold up on appeal to the Supreme Court of Colorado. That court held that possible future benefits were enough, and it didn't matter what evidence of private benefit was in the record: "Here, the taking is essentially for public benefit. Parcel C will be used for public right of ways, storm drainage, and sewer improvements." The Institute for Justice (the same folks who brought you Kelo) took up the mantle, and sought cert review in SCOTUS.
We filed an amici brief in support of the petition.
Now we have the final two briefs in the cert-stage process: the Brief in Opposition, and the Reply Brief. We won't detail either here, but leave you to read them (both are worthy of your time).
Next step: await for the case to be considered at the Justices' conference. Stay tuned.
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Sidebar (and you can skip what follows if you have better things to do): the name of the Respondent ("Carousel Farms") reminds us of a mentor we had back in the day. One of those "barrister" types from the Old School. Solo practitioner, trial lawyer guy. Defended death penalty cases back before Gideon v. Wainwright. Won 'em all but one (and that was a mistrial). Taught us a lot about lawyering simply by recounting war stories. His favorite restaurant in town had a simple name: "Carousel." Like the thing kids play on. A "merry go round." It had been around for a while (indeed, it is still there).
Thing is, our lawyer friend mispronounced the restaurant's name as "carousal" (as in a party, i.e., carousing). We never corrected him. His gross mispronunciation became one of those "things" that served as a point of reference for us, something we'd joke about (we're pretty sure he knew he was mispronouncing it, but it had become such a habit that he didn't care, so we played along and often spoke of carousing at "Carousel.").
Well, time marched on and well after he hung up his brogues and stopped practicing law, we continued to meet and talk about cases, trials, and the like. Once you find a mentor like that, you should never let them go. But as he approached 90 years, his very sharp mind became ... less sharp. But even as he slipped, we continued to hang out. One day we said to him, "say, what do you think about getting lunch at ... Carousel? [mispronouncing it "Carousal" as we always did]."
Instead of his usual wry smile response, he looked at us like we were blithering idiots: like we had completely lost our ability to form words in the English language. "Uh, it's pronounced 'Carousel,' you know," he finally said. Maybe the first time in decades he pronounced it correctly.
We thought about explaining why we were pronouncing it wrong. But eventually decided to just let it go. "Carousel" it was, and not "Carousal." While we were a bit relieved that he had (finally) settled on the proper pronunciation, we were more sad that the "thing" we had shared between us for so long was gone, never to return.
He's now gone, too. The Colorado case about "Carousel Farms Metropolitan District" reminds us of him. If the Court grants cert, please forgive us if we purposely mispronounce the case name a few times, just to honor our passed friend.
Reply Brief, Woodcrest Homes, Inc. v. Carousel Farms Metro. Dist., No. 19-607 (Feb. 24, 2020)
