Pheasant Ridge Associates Ltd. Partnership v. Town of Burlington

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that statements “to the effect that [the selectmen] would take any action necessary to stop the development” was activity beyond the protected petitioning act
• taking of land for public park pursuant to town meeting vote was invalid where manifest purpose behind taking was to block low or moderate income housing
• invalidating the taking of land for a public park, done pursuant to a town meeting vote, where the manifest purpose behind this was to block low or moderate housing at the site
• relying on federal and state case law proscribing bad faith takings
• affirming judicial determination that town’s exercise of its eminent domain power was in bad faith because the evidence of bad faith was essentially undisputed, but noting that courts “should not easily attribute ... motives to a town, and to its citizens voting at town meeting”
• land taking for park, recreation and moderate income housing seen as pretext to exclude low or moderate income housing

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).