Real Estate & Property Law

Crusading eminent domain lawyer a man of the people

By Alan Ackerman

Kermitt Waters, the outstanding eminent domain attorney of Nevada, is taking on the same challenge that occurred in Michigan six years ago with Proposal 4. The Nevada PISTOL - the People's Initiative to Stop the Taking of Our Land, is a harsh attempt to limit for private purposes. The problem with PISTOL may be that it overreaches, yet it is an aggressive response to a misuse of the eminent domain process in Nevada and apparently the only alternative available.

""Many lawyers would do it their way, and tough if you don''t like it,"" Pappas says. ""He''s a common guy. He doesn''t turn his nose up at you.""

Jan Jones, mayor of Las Vegas during the Pappas case, speaks highly of Waters although they disagreed. She respects him as a lawyer and a good-hearted person.

""He''s passionate, he''s dogged,"" she says. ""I don''t think anyone is more powerful in their representation of a client.""

But, she says, Waters is sometimes just blowing hot air.

""Taxing gaming at 20 percent would take the industry,"" says Jones, now senior vice president of communications and government relations at Harrah''s Entertainment. ""I don''t know if he''s really thought about it.""

Jones says she isn''t sure how much of what Waters says is ""belief, or how much of it is rhetoric.""

Waters says it''s not rhetoric. He says the casinos should pay.

Waters takes care of his friends, and often remains cordial with adversaries. Chairez says most people don''t know Waters is like a grown-up Opie from ""The Andy Griffith Show"" of the 1960s. He describes his friend as a Texan alpha male who is also a big, sentimental softy.

Waters has two daughters, Liberty, 38, and Autumn, 34. Autumn works in Waters'' firm as an eminent domain lawyer. Liberty, who lives in Seattle with her husband and two children, is an environmental lawyer. Although Waters is separated from his wife, Jan, the mother of his children, he says he remains close to her.

""Kermitt has an amazing love for life,"" says Autumn Waters, who shares her dad''s startlingly bright blue eyes. ""When he sees something that''s wrong, he tries to fix it. He''s always been that way.""

Full post as published by National Eminent Domain Blog on October 13, 2010 (boomark / email).