City Of Sea Tac, Washington Slammed For Secretly Sabotaging Couple's Land Development Plans, Strong-Arming Them Into Relinquishing Ownership Of Prime 4.23 Acre Real Estate Parcel (Inverse Condemnation); Judge Awards Over $18+ Million In Damages, Etc.; Suggests Bar Complaint Filing Against City Attorney May Be Appropriate

In Seattle, Washington, The Seattle Times reports:

• A West Seattle couple sued the city of SeaTac and have been awarded $18 million after proving city officials sabotaged their development plans, strong-armed them into giving up their property and illegally withheld city emails and documents that demonstrated the deception.
  
  A three-month-long civil trial revealed the shadowy subterfuge behind a secret land grab that was orchestrated by the city of SeaTac, replete with backroom deals, baldfaced deceptions, and a mayor intent on driving Somali refugees from the neighborhood.
  
  The aim of it all: to wrestle 4.23 acres of prime real estate from entrepreneurs Gerry and Kathy Kingen, according to the judge and jury who heard the case.
  
  The West Seattle couple sued the city and won, proving in court that SeaTac officials intentionally sabotaged their development plans, strong-armed them into giving up their property and then violated the state’s Public Records Act by withholding city emails and documents proving the deception.
  
  The trial judge also concluded the former SeaTac mayor wanted condos built on the site, believing they would price out Somalis who had moved into “his neighborhood.”
  
  In January, a King County Superior Court jury awarded the Kingens more than $9.3 million in damages for their claims of misrepresentation, inverse condemnation(1) and interference with business expectancy. Earlier this month, Judge Richard McDermott also found the Kingens had proved promissory estoppel — basically, they had relied on the city’s promises, to their detriment. The judge also awarded the Kingens $1.2 million in attorneys’ fees and ruled the couple was entitled to interest on the damages, totaling $7.5 million.
  
  All told, the Kingens were awarded just over $18 million.
  
  McDermott also issued a blistering summary of the case, criticizing the city for its dealings with the couple and saying there’s evidence the SeaTac City Attorney’s Office “participated in this profound and unacceptable pattern of deception.” The judge also suggested a bar complaint may be warranted.

For more, see SeaTac ordered to pay $18 million to couple it cheated in secret land grab.

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(1) A government taking without due process or payment of compensation is often referred to as an inverse condemnation:

• Inverse condemnation is a term used in the law to describe a situation in which the government takes private property but fails to pay the compensation required by the 5th Amendment of Constitution. In some states the term also includes damaging of property as well as taking it.
  
  In order to be compensated, the owner must then sue the government. In such cases the owner is the plaintiff and that is why the action is called inverse – the order of parties is reversed, as compared to the usual procedure in direct condemnation where the government is the plaintiff who sues a defendant-owner to take his or her property
  
  The taking can be physical (e.g., land seizure, flooding, retention of possession after a lease to the government expires, deprivation of access, removal of ground support) or it can be a regulatory taking (when regulations are so onerous that they make the regulated property unusable by its owner for any reasonable or economically viable purpose).
  
  The latter is the most controversial form of inverse condemnation. It is considered to occur when the regulation of the property's use is so severe that it goes "too far," as Justice Holmes put it in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), and deprives the owner of the property's value, utility or marketability, denying him or her the benefits of property ownership thus accomplishing a constitutionally forbidden de facto taking without compensation. Reference: Wikipedia.