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…so says Cleveland Cuyahoga Port Authority attorney Steven Kaufman about Judge John Corrigan’s instructions to the Port Authority to “settle quickly with landowners” that have refused to be bullied by Scott Wolstein’s usurpers of private property rights.

Here’s an excerpt from today’s story in the fishwrap:

A probate judge declared that developer Scott Wolstein “made a lot of mistakes” in trying to acquire land on the Flats’ east bank and urged Wolstein and the Port Authority to settle quickly with landowners.

Cuyahoga County Probate Judge John Corrigan recessed an eminent-domain trial Monday after hearing testimony that at least one Flats property owner was close to an agreement to sell to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority before the trial began, a draft transcript shows.

“If I were you, I would settle this case just as fast as I can,” Corrigan told a high-ranking port official. “That’s what I would do.”

The Port Authority is suing in Probate Court to take about a dozen parcels on the east bank for Wolstein’s $230 million redevelopment of the one-time party row.

For the last month, lawyers for property owners detailed in court what they called unfair appraisals and negotiations by the port and Wolstein, who is footing the bill for the land.

Two things:

• Told you that the landowners were getting screwed - looks like the judge thinks so too.
• Too bad the paper had to get it’s information from court transcripts because as business reporter Henry Gomez sees it, this story is - “extremely boring”. I guess courtroom dramas where people are getting their rights trampled on is not nearly as exciting as eating from the buffet table in Vegas with the folks doing the trampling. Oh well, at least they wrote the story.