by Rob Laymon, For the Daily News
Posted: July 22, 1998

ATLANTIC CITY — In many ways, Vera Coking finally won the right to live in the past. ... Coking stood briefly outside her house on Columbia Place yesterday, letting photographers get pictures of her raising her arms in mock jubilation. ... Across the street from her lonely rooming house - the last still standing in a beach block here - car jockeys hustled autos from the Trump Plaza "pit." ... Buses crowded her street. Bulldozers moved dirt for the landscaping of the new Wild West Casino. For blocks in every direction, dust from casino construction filled the air. ... Yet, it looks like Coking, a 70-ish widow and grandmother, will stay put for a while.

On Monday, Coking knocked Donald Trump for a loop in state Superior Court. ... The court ruled that the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority could not condemn her property and turn it over to the Trump organization for a limousine parking lot, as part of Trump Plaza's $55 million expansion. ... Judge Richard Williams said the condemnation would be "giving Trump a blank check" to future development on the property.

"Who named Donald Trump the king of Atlantic City?" Coking's lawyer Glenn Zeitz said, standing outside her home yesterday. ... "The message is out that if you want to condemn someone's property, you'd better be real sure it's for legitimate reasons and not for some hidden agenda."

Five years ago, Coking and two nearby property owners - owners of a jewelry store and a mom-and-pop restaurant received notice of the planned condemnation. ... Zeitz said Coking's property is worth at least $1.2 million. ... But Trump's highest offer was $250,000, Zeitz said. Peter Banin, whose jewelry store was also threatened with condemnation, said he received an offer of $225,000 about two years ago.

Vera Coking is a retired homeowner in Atlantic City, New Jersey whose home was the focus of a prominent eminent domain case involving Donald Trump.

In 1961, Vera and her husband bought the property at 127 South Columbia Place as a summertime retreat for $20,000. In 1993, when Donald Trump sought to expand his property holdings around his Atlantic City casino and hotel (to build a parking lot designed for limousines), he bought several lots adjacent to his property. Coking, who had lived in her house at that time for about 35 years, refused to sell. This was not the first time Coking had been asked to sell her property for development. When Coking refused to sell to Trump, the city of Atlantic City condemned her house, using the power of eminent domain. Her designated compensation was to be $251,000, about one quarter of what it had been valued 10 years earlier.

With the assistance of the Institute for Justice, Coking fought the local authorities, and eventually prevailed. Superior Court Judge Richard Williams ruled that, because there were "no limits" on what Trump could do with the property, the plan to take Coking's property did not meet the test of law. But Williams' ruling did not reject the practice of using eminent domain to take private property from one individual and transferring it to another, which would eventually be upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Kelo v. City of New London.