More arbitrary taking of land by the court

Four months ago, the Washington Supreme Court allowed the Seattle Monorail Authority to step on the property rights of John and Doris Fujii by condemning property the agency didn't need. Following the Nov. 8 vote, an injustice in that case was averted — no thanks to the court.

Now, in a ruling about the property of Kenneth and Barbara Miller of Tacoma, the court has done it again.

The Miller case stemmed from a public meeting at which Sound Transit made the decision to condemn the Millers' land for a park-and-ride lot. The question was whether the agency had to tell the Millers about that meeting beforehand. The court said it didn't. The Millers knew their property might be condemned at some point. But they didn't know a certain meeting in June 2003 would deal with their property — and they weren't there.

Justice Mary Fairhurst wrote for the five-justice majority (including Bobbe Bridge, Charles Johnson, Barbara Madsen and Susan Owens) that the Millers were "not entitled to actual individualized notice."

The law is fuzzy on it, and Fairhurst sided with the government. Sound Transit had announced its meeting on its Internet site, saying that it planned to take "certain real property interests" near a railroad station. It had named the railroad station but not the property it wanted to take. That was good enough, Fairhurst said.

Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, writing also for Justices Tom Chambers, Jim Johnson and Richard Sanders, argued that it was not good enough to post it on the Internet, because the Millers might not be connected to the Internet. Better to put it in a newspaper, Alexander said.

While we appreciate Alexander's endorsement of our product, we prefer the position taken by Jim Johnson, who said the notice also should have had "specific identification of the property to be condemned."

We would go further: Notice of the property to be condemned should also have been delivered to the people who own it. "Due process of law" should require no less.