The Maine supreme court says the state Transportation Department legally took land occupied by a well-known restaurant so it could build a new bridge over the Penbobscot River.
In its ruling Thursday, the court says the former owners of the Sail Inn failed to present any evidence, other than personal opinion, contradicting the state’s position that taking all five acres of the restaurant’s land in Prospect was necessary.
The court also says plaintiffs Paul and Robert Dyer not contest that traffic safety concerns existed during construction of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge near the site of the Sail Inn.
The state condemned land for construction of a bridge to replace the Waldo-Hancock Bridge, which was built in 1931. The replacement bridge opened in 2006.
Property
Property
Why automatic rental termination fees are illegal
The story below describes a property management company that was automatically charging tenants a penalty if they moved out before their lease ended. While typically if you back out of a contract, which is essentially what your lease is, you still have to meet your obligation or pay to compensate the other party.
The reason a landlord cannot automatically charge the tenant the remainder of the lease amount or even a fee, is that if the landlord fills that unit, they will be making more than what they would have made under the contract. The landlord can only recover what they would have made if the lease / contract was fulfilled by the tenant.
But this does not mean you can just get out of your lease without risk. If you sign a one year lease, and move out before the end of the lease, you may have to pay the rent while you are not there. Your landlord will need to try to find another tenant.
A Portland-based property management company has agreed to stop automatically charging early termination fees when tenants leave an apartment before a lease is up.
According to Maine’s attorney general, Port Property Management typically charged tenants early departure fees of $600, even if it immediately re-rented the apartment. Attorney General Steve Rowe says automatic early termination fees can be illegal under Maine law if a landlord immediately finds a new tenant.
Under a court-ordered consent decree, Port Property Management also agreed to pay a $10,000 civil penalty and to refund money to tenants who were improperly charged early termination fees.
Port Property Management, which manages more than 700 apartments in Portland and South Portland, did not admit to any wrongdoing.
Government
Court sides with School
The Portland Press Herald had sued the school to get notes from a meeting concerning job performance.
The Portland School Committee will not be forced to release notes from a private meeting last summer, thanks to a unanimous ruling Thursday by Maine’s highest court in favor of the committee and against the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.In a case that tested Maine’s right-to-know statute, the state Supreme Judicial Court found that the School Committee was within the law to hold the private meeting with school officials.
Committee members at the July 25 meeting grilled Superintendent Mary Jo O’Connor and Finance Director Richard Paulson about their job performance, relative to an unexpected $2.5 million budget deficit. Both officials later resigned.
Members said the meeting was private because they limited the discussion to job performance. Under state law, such talks are allowed to be held privately if they have the potential of damaging an employee’s professional reputation.
The newspaper sued the School Committee, claiming that the meeting went beyond a simple review of job performance by getting into budget issues and thus should have been conducted in public.
In an earlier ruling, Superior Court Justice Roland Cole agreed in part and ordered some notes taken during the meeting to be released to the newspaper. The School Committee appealed the ruling, and the notes were not released pending the higher court’s decision.
The high court’s seven justices sided unanimously with the School Committee.
news
Portland Firm takes on Missionaries Case
A Portland law firm is one of three lead counsels involved in a federal lawsuit filed by relatives of U.S. missionaries killed in Colombia.
The suit claims that Chiquita Brands International Inc. contributed to their deaths by financing the leftist rebel group known as FARC.
Preti Flaherty Beliveau & Pachios is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Miami. It seeks unspecified damages for families of five missionaries from the Sanford, Fla.-based New Tribes Mission. They were kidnapped in the 1990s, held hostage for lengthy periods and killed by members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the suit says.
news
Maine Incarceration Rate Lowest
While the Country a whole has jailed over a million and half people, Maine’s rate is the lowest.
Maine had the nation’s lowest incarceration rate in 2005, the latest year for which data is available, according to a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The report found that the country’s prison population nearly tripled over the last two decades – rising from around 585,000 in 1987 to nearly 1.6 million in 2007.
It also found that for the first time, more than one out of every 100 American adults is behind bars.
The Pew report shows that despite recent concerns in Maine about prison overcrowding, the state has relatively few inmates when compared with other states. Maine also spends a comparatively small percentage of its tax revenue on jails and prisons.
news
More bad lawyers
I find it hard to believe Mr. Clarke did not know his actions were a clear violation. Then to not bother looking it up, or contacting the Bar to find out? He seems to have gotten off easy.
The violations stem from Clark’s financial relationship with an elderly widow who suffered from multiple sclerosis when they first met. She later developed Alzheimer’s disease and a personality disorder, among various physical ailments.
According to Mead, the widow, Eugenie B. Landry, owned a “small but valuable oceanfront residence,” which, upon her death in 2005, was sold.
The estate, which Clark controlled — and under which he was named the beneficiary — received the net proceeds of $524,000 from the sale.
“Clark ultimately took $325,000 from the estate,” Mead wrote in his opinion, adding, “He used the money to cover his children’s tuition costs and to pay off his mortgage.”
Property
Gifted Harvard properties sold
Two properties that were donated to Harvard apparently for use by faculty members, have been sold. Because they were donated for the specific purposes, the University needed approval from the Maine attorney general before they could be sold. Without seeing the actual deeds, it is impossible to say if the sales were in line with the donor’s intent. But apparently the proceeds of the sales are to be used for purposes benefiting faculty.
In the case involving the Kendall estate in Maine, Harvard asked the Maine attorney general in January 2007 to allow it to sell the property, stating in court papers that the house needed “major capital repairs” and that the island’s remote location would force the school to pay an “exorbitant” amount of money for repair work that “far outweighs the income generated by the endowed maintenance fund.”
Maine’s attorney general raised no objection to the Kendall sale, and a judge approved the request on Jan. 23, 2007, 15 days after Harvard’s petition was filed.
Linda Conti, the assistant attorney general who handled the case, said in a phone interview that she made her decision based on the facts in Harvard’s petition. There was no hearing.
Government
Federal Court rules against EPA
The suit challenged the EPA’s regulation that permitted mercury emissions, much of it from midwest coal plants.
Maine and more than a dozen other states, along with environmental and public health groups, have won a federal lawsuit aimed at cutting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act in 2005 by setting rules that allow plants to discharge toxic mercury and avoid strict controls. The EPA’s “Clean Air Mercury Rule” would have created a cap-and-trade program to reduce overall nationwide emissions 70 percent by 2018.
– PressHerald
news
Chief Justice pleads for funding
In the annual address at the State House Chief Justice Leigh Saufley noted the need for additional funds.
Saufley also called on the state to increase funding for court-appointed lawyers. She says there has been a sharp increase in the number of cases in which defendants require state-funded attorneys, but the funding has not kept up pace.
“If meetings were solutions, we’d have this thing nailed. More meetings won’t help. The increase in filings isn’t going away. If the attorneys can’t be paid, criminal charges can’t be prosecuted, trials can’t be held and alleged victims will wait,” said Chief Justice Saufley.
– WCSH6