A private landowner handcuffed and arrested on his own ground for refusing to allow utility company bulldozers to wield eminent domain and clearcut his timber? A helluva showdown is erupting in the most significantly hot property rights case in the U.S.
“This is still America,” says Fenn Church, standing beside yellow caution tape at the edge of his 416-acre property in the crosshairs of an Alabama Power Company (APCO) 74-mile, $248 million transmission line. “I’m not afraid to be put in cuffs, because it shows the public how far power companies will go to crush someone’s rights. I’m not violent or belligerent, but I’m not moving. They can put me in jail.”
Indeed. A hearing is set for Monday, November 9, in Shelby County Circuit Court, under Judge Jonathan Spann. APCO seeks a restraining order against Church—on his own land…