Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [131]
Matt and Sue Dery picked up the slack whenever Von Winkle wasn’t available to help with LeBlanc. They started bringing him to their home regularly to eat homemade Italian sausages, one of his favorite dishes.
The road to recovery, though, was arduous and had no guarantees. Susette understood the odds. But as long as Billy and Matt and Sue were around, she figured she’d get through it. They had beaten the odds to save their homes. She hoped LeBlanc would be so lucky.
April 2003
Around the time that the Institute for Justice had decided to represent Susette and her neighbors, Dana Berliner had wanted to know how widespread eminent-domain abuses were throughout the country. With the support and encouragement of the institute’s founder, Chip Mellor, she had undertaken the first comprehensive study of the problem ever conducted in the United States. After two years of intense research, she generated a report titled: “Public Power, Private Gain.” It contained a bombshell. In the previous five years, more than ten thousand private properties in forty-one states had been threatened or taken by eminent domain for private use.
When Mellor saw Berliner’s findings, he wanted John Kramer to get them out to the national media. Among other things, Berliner’s report showed that what was going on in New London was not unique. It was more like a national epidemic—and no one seemed to be talking about it.
To get the word out, Kramer took a risk. He called 60 Minutes and asked to speak with the show’s legendary creator and executive producer, Don Hewitt. He reached Hewitt’s secretary and left a message.
Fifteen minutes later, Kramer’s phone rang. It was Hewitt.
“Mr. Hewitt, I know you don’t typically take calls from PR people,” began Kramer, who went on to say he had something very unusual that might appeal to 60 Minutes. “Can I give you a thirty-second pitch on it?”
“Go for it,” Hewitt said.
Kramer reported that eminent domain was being used nationwide by local governments to take private homes and to give them to developers. And small businesses were being taken to make way for big businesses. “We’ve documented more than ten thousand cases across the country,” he said.
Hewitt asked if the institute had a report to document this.
“I can get you that by FedEx tomorrow,” Kramer said.
Hewitt told him to send it. “If it’s something we’re interested in, we’ll call you back.”
Two days later, Kramer got a call from Bob Anderson, the producer for reporter Mike Wallace. He said Hewitt had handed him Berliner’s report and had said, “I don’t know if this is all true, but if it is true, it’s a helluva story, and you’ve got to cover it.”
Within a week, Anderson was in the institute’s office, and 60 Minutes had an exclusive.
Over the next five months, Mike Wallace spent time at the institute’s office, and he investigated egregious eminent-domain abuses in Ohio and Arizona, cases that involved clients represented by the institute. In the opening episode of the fall season, in September 2003, 60 Minutes did a blistering report on the widespread abuse of eminent domain throughout the country, featuring interviews with Bullock and Berliner. The segment didn’t mention New London, but it had an immediate impact. In one night, more than ten million Americans became acquainted with a topic they had known little about. Almost every major daily paper in the country ended up covering Berliner’s study. The coverage was so widespread that the institute received a national award for its expertise in public relations.
March 2, 2004
Scott Bullock was on his computer when he received an e-mail from the Connecticut Supreme Court, informing him that the decision would be posted on the court’s Web site the following day. The institute had already prepared two press releases, one anticipating good news and the other anticipating bad news.
The next morning, Bullock and Berliner logged on to the court’s Web site and relentlessly