Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [111]
July 19, 2001
After making some minor changes to his affidavit, Levin signed it and had it notarized before faxing it to Berliner, who forwarded it to Londregan with a request that he allow Levin’s sworn statement to be introduced as evidence at the trial. Londregan told the institute to forget it.
“If you have a witness, put him on the stand,” Londregan said. “We want to cross-examine him. That’s the way it goes.”
That afternoon, Berliner faxed a note to Levin. “To my dismay, the defendants are not willing to stipulate to your affidavit,” she said. “I therefore write to see if it would be possible to take a short trial deposition.” She offered to schedule it at a time and location of Levin’s choice.
Levin balked. “I would appreciate not being subpoenaed for the deposition,” he told Berliner. “As you know I am scheduled for surgery a week from today. I do appreciate your courtesy. I am taking a heavy pain medication and could not proceed in any way that I would be comfortable with.”
A lawyer knows the weaknesses of his case better than anyone. Tom Londregan had a few problems to overcome. The biggest one had to do with delegation.
Under both the state and federal constitutions, the City of New London had legal authority to take private property for public use through eminent domain. One safeguard against excessive abuse of this power was that it was held by individuals—in this case, members of the New London City Council—who were ultimately answerable to voters. But the city council had delegated the power of eminent domain to the NLDC, a private agency whose key members had been handpicked by a lobbyist and consultant on contract with the governor’s administration. There was no way around the fact that the city had given the power to take people’s homes to an exclusive group of individuals who were not answerable or accountable to the public.
Another obstacle Londregan faced had to do with timing. The NLDC had started the process of acquiring private properties well before it had a preliminary plan, much less a publicly approved final plan, for what to do with the land.
Yet Londregan still felt he would prevail. The fact that the city’s municipal-development plan included new utilities, roads, and infrastructure to the Fort Trumbull area—all public benefits—seemed to bode well for the city. The argument was that Connecticut law didn’t allow a couple of holdouts to stop an entire city from carrying out a comprehensive development plan that was designed to generate badly needed tax revenue and jobs. The law did afford people just compensation and fair market value for their properties—all of which had been flatly rejected by Susette and her neighbors.
Londregan didn’t even take depositions from the plaintiffs. Why bother? He knew what they were going to give him on the witness stand: emotionally charged sob stories about being forced out of their homes against their wills.
Even his own mother couldn’t influence his thinking about the case. She had tried, on account of the Londregan family’s rich historic ties to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood. Half Sicilian and half Irish, Tom had had a grandfather—Timothy Andrew Lonergan—who was the fourteenth of fifteen children. After five of Timothy’s older brothers immigrated to America and got jobs with the railroad in New London, he changed his last name to Londregan out of fear the company wouldn’t hire six brothers from the same family. He got hired by the railroad and settled in Fort Trumbull around the turn of the century.
Eventually, Timothy Londregan’s house was taken by eminent domain to make way for railroad expansion. Londregan built a new home on Goshen Street, within a block of some of the homes now involved in the lawsuit. Tom’s father, who died in 1965, had been raised in the Goshen Street house.