Fight the Power

Did you see where The Bearded One and his friend laid the hurt on the Department of Justice? Win some, lose some. This win has to feel good.

In a nutshell, the country lawyers from Miami represented a landowner coming up on the end of a 10 year lease to Southern Command.

(Come on people, Southern Command: responsible for U.S. military operations in the Western Hemisphere? For you conspiracy theorists, they do things like supply guns to counter insurgents, or regular insurgents, or the government in power that creates the desire or need for insurgents. They may be the unassuming neighbor who leads a quiet and solitary life, but who travels a lot and asks you to walk their dogs while they are gone. To those of us who are not conspiracy theorists and have faith in the wisdom of our government and its leaders and accept what they tell us at face value, Southern Command is tasked with Building A Brighter Future. (They probably just noted that I linked to the SOUTHCOMM site and are going to monitor my IPO and the IPO of those of you reading this.)

Anyhoo, it seems like the kind of adversary you don't necessarily want to piss off. So much for that.

And this is not the first time The Boys smack down SOUTHCOMM.

Two days before expiration of the 10 years lease, when negotiations to extend the lease did not result in terms favorable to SOUTHCOMM, SOUTHCOMM and its lawyers did what any fair minded party would do in good faith: they filed an action to condemn the property for Military use. Nice.

David O. Vollenweider III, part of the crack legal team at the Justice Department's Land Acquisition Division in Washington, argued no deal had been reached. No signed contract, no meeting of the minds, no deal. You'd think David O.'s position would resonate with Judge K. Michael Moore, right?

Nope.

Dotson and Lodish argued that even though the deal had not closed, negotiations were well-documented and the condemnation action was in bad faith and a violation of well-established contract law. “They wanted to remain, and we believe we had negotiated such an extension,” Dotson said.

GPA’s legal team showed the negotiated price had been approved by government officials.

“We were able to go up the chain,” Dotson said.

David, you just run along now back to Washington and explain to your bosses up the chain at the Department of Justice how you cost Southern Command 22.8 million.

N.B. I'm not really a facial hair kind of guy, but Alvin and this win have me rethinking my position. Heck, there are apparently a bunch of reasons to sport the growth, in addition to making you a bad ass.