EMINENT DOMAIN Widow fights to keep her home

As part of the deal, Good Samaritan Hospital would get additional property.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- An 80-year-old woman is challenging the city's plan to seize her home for a road project, contending that the real purpose of the project violates a one-year ban in Ohio on taking property that ultimately will end up in the hands of another private owner.
A Hamilton County magistrate will decide today whether the city can take Emma Dimasi's house for the $4 million road project. The city has given her until Saturday to leave the small brick home she moved into in 1959.
Taking houses for road projects is an accepted practice for cities. But Dimasi says the real purpose for the project is private economic development.
Good Samaritan Hospital is contributing $1.28 million toward the project. It would give the hospital more room to grow as part of its $122 million expansion. The hospital also gets whatever land is left over after the construction for $1.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cities and states have the power to take private property to give to another private owner, but that states have the power to enact stronger rights for property owners.
In the first challenge of property rights laws to reach a state high court since then, the Ohio Supreme Court is considering whether Norwood, a Cincinnati suburb, can take residential property and give it to a developer for a shopping mall.
Family's concerns
Dimasi's son and attorney, Vincent Dimasi, who owns a neighboring rental property also being taken by the city, said the family's goal is not to make new law.
"She's lived there almost 50 years. She's 80 years old. She's a widow. The one thing she has is the house," Vincent Dimasi said. "The one thing my dad did before he died was to make sure she had the house free and clear so there wouldn't be any problems."
City officials do not deny that the project will help the hospital. But city engineers have wanted to straighten the road since at least the 1980s, and crash data show the accident rate is 40 percent higher than the city average.
"It's costing us to do this," hospital vice president Stephen Schwalbe testified in court last week. "But at the end of the day, we could improve the traffic flow around Good Samaritan Hospital for generations to come."
Emma Dimasi may have a hard time making her case. Under Ohio law, the government's power to take property for roads is almost absolute. Also, the ban on using eminent domain for economic development may not apply since the city council adopted the ordinance to take the land before the ban took effect.
Here's the situation
If the magistrate rules in the city's favor, the family can file an objection to Common Pleas Judge Melba Marsh. If Marsh rules for the city, the city gets the property and the case will go to trial over how much the property is worth.
The family cannot appeal the city's right to take the land until the trial is over. By then, the house probably will be torn down.
State Rep. Bill Seitz, a Republican from Green Township and co-chairman of a 25-member legislative task force studying eminent domain law in Ohio, said he doubted that the state would restrict the use of eminent domain in cases such as this.