The recent Supreme Court ruling predictably leads to the enrichment of a lucky few.
Although Carol Severance’s lawsuit killed the largest beach resanding project in Texas history, her four Galveston beach properties won’t suffer.
Instead, she could walk away with more than $2 million from the sale of her hurricane-damaged houses at pre-storm prices.
The money comes from a federal program to buy houses in hazardous areas. Twenty-five percent of the buyout will be paid by the Texas General Land Office, the same agency she sued in a case that led the Land Office last week to cancel a $40 million project that would have placed fresh sand on six miles of beach west of the Galveston Seawall.
“It’s an ironic result that someone who has been at the trough has also caused the loss of all these public resources to the west end beach front,” said Galveston city Councilwoman Elizabeth Beeton.
Severance, a lawyer living in San Diego, Calif., says she brought her lawsuit because she believes in private property rights.
Heck of a job, State Supreme Court! I’m imagining an attack ad that would run against the justices who are up for re-election in 2012 that speak in ominous tones of how they gave millions of your tax dollars to a bunch of California lawyers that lost their fancy beach houses to Hurricane Ike. What I have a much harder time imagining is a funding source for such an ad. Alas.