The Baker family was about to sell their property when a criminal hid in their home. They were not prepared for what came next.
KALISPELL, Mont.—Vicki Baker was ready to close the sale of her house in McKinney, Texas, in July four years ago. She and her new husband were settling into a new home in Montana. Her daughter, Deanna Cook, lived in the McKinney house pending the sale closing.
She said the future seemed as bright and boundless as the view from her Montana mountaintop home.
On July 25, 2020, the sale was canceled, the house had more than $50,000 in damage courtesy of the McKinney Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics team, and a fugitive was lying dead in what had been Baker’s master bedroom.
Baker, and the public interest law firm, Institute for Justice, have petitioned the U.S Supreme Court to hear Baker’s claim that the damage constitutes a taking under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As such, the city would be obligated to provide Baker just compensation for the damage.
The city of McKinney denies it owes Baker anything because the police were legally exercising their power while responding to an emergency. McKinney appears to have legal precedence on its side.
“Our appellate counsel will be responding in opposition to Ms. Baker’s request to the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of her case,” Denise Lessard, McKinney’s Senior Media & Public Relations Manager, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
However, Jeffrey Redfern of the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, who is representing Baker, says the lower courts got it wrong. He said those courts claim to have found exceptions to the Takings Clause where none are listed.
He pointed out that when the Fifth Amendment was written, the United States had no professional law enforcement agencies.
“So I think the idea that, you know, James Madison, when he was drafting this would have thought that there was an unwritten sort of secret exception for a type of government officer, that he couldn’t have even imagined yet, is pretty far out there,” he told The Epoch Times.
