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“Are you ready to talk to them?” Bullock asked.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, trying to hold on to LeBlanc, who was attempting to walk off.

Bullock wasn’t kidding. He wanted to get down there and talk to the press before Horton and Londregan got outside. And he wanted her to join him.

Susette’s stomach felt like it was doing somersaults. She let go of LeBlanc’s hand. “I didn’t know I had to give a talk here,” she said. “What am I supposed to say?”

Kramer kept two sticky notes in his desk drawer. One of them read “TRUTH.” “Just tell the truth,” Kramer told Susette. “Just tell your story. And if one of the reporters asks you a legal question, just direct it to Scott.” Kramer didn’t bother to tell her the quote on the other sticky note in his drawer: “Mother Teresa said, ‘Facing the press is more difficult than bathing a leper.’”

Suddenly, Susette realized LeBlanc was nowhere to be seen. She was afraid for his safety, but was being herded toward the microphones. A couple of members of the conservancy said they’d find him.

“What do I say? What do I say?” Susette asked. Bullock assured her she’d do fine. “Oh, for the love of God,” she said, suddenly feeling queasy.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg stepped to her right shoulder and pushed a microphone in front of her. Pete Williams from the NBC Nightly News approached her left arm and extended his microphone.

“I was very encouraged by today’s arguments with the justices,” she began, her voice quivering.

Bullock, Berliner, and the rest of the plaintiffs crowded behind her as she answered questions. By the time the last question came—about the City of New London—the city’s attorneys had shown up and were awaiting the chance to tell their side. By then, Susette had found her rhythm.

“They have more than enough room to develop everything that they want to develop,” Susette said. “We just simply want to keep our homes.”

As she stepped away and the press pool turned toward Wes Horton and Tom Londregan, a print journalist approached Susette. “Do you really feel confident that the United States Supreme Court is going to side with the homeowners?” he asked.

“Well, why wouldn’t they?” she asked, heading off to find LeBlanc.

He was safe. Her friends from the neighborhood had found him.

40

FOR THE TAKINGS

June 23, 2005

Scott Bullock and Dana Berliner hovered over his computer screen, repeatedly hitting the Refresh icon in hope of seeing a new posting about their case on a Supreme Court blog. With only two days remaining in the Court’s session, they knew a decision was imminent. Anxious, Bullock had dispatched a paralegal to the Supreme Court to make sure they had a copy of the decision the moment it became available.

Soon after she left, the firm’s receptionist informed Bullock that a clerk from the Supreme Court was on the line. Mellor, Kramer, and other staffers rushed into Bullock’s office as he took the call.

“I’m calling about the Kelo case. I just want to let you know that the Court has issued an opinion and the decision was affirmed.”

“Thank you,” he said faintly, putting the phone down.

He looked up at his colleagues and said, “We lost.”

No one spoke. No one moved. No one wanted to believe it.

A few minutes later Bullock’s paralegal returned from the Court with the published decision.

“We know,” Bullock told her as she entered the room.

“It was 5–4,” she said.

Bullock and Berliner scanned the opinion. “Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens had written for the majority. “Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose.”

No basis for stopping a city from taking private homes to give to a private developer? Disgusted, Bullock flipped to the dissent, written by O’Connor. “Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power,” she had written. “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable