(The Center Square) – The law group that filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s attempt to use unclaimed funds to help build a new Cleveland Browns stadium in Brook Park has filed a brief regarding a similar case of using unclaimed funds in California.
The DannLaw Group, which includes former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the California case, which it says allows California officials to seize unclaimed funds and liquidate private property without providing direct notice to owners and without compensating those property owners.
“This isn’t about football or California or Ohio it’s about whether our most basic property rights mean anything when the government decides it wants what’s ours,” Dann said in a statement. “If states can take money held in trust for citizens and spend it on private ventures, no one’s property is safe. We’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to make clear that due process and just compensation are not optional.”
The California case could potentially act as precedent for the Ohio case if the Supreme Court accepts the case and rules in favor of the property owners against the state.
The Ohio lawsuit claims the state would be violating its constitution by using $600 million in unclaimed funds to pay for part of a new $2.4 billion Browns stadium in Brook Park with plans to pay the funds back over time through a tax capture at the site, saying the funds are private property and not for public use.
“The idea that the government can take your property without notice, without your consent or without payment first is exactly what our state and federal constitutions were written to prevent,” attorney Jeffrey A. Crossman, one of the DannLaw attorneys representing the Ohio plaintiffs, said in a statement. “… Private property rights are supposed to be sacred. Yet in both states, the government is treating other people’s property as a slush fund. We want the U.S. Supreme Court to review these state laws when they come back to the bench in October.”
