Donald Trump, the second-place candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, tried to use eminent domain in 1994 to expel an elderly widow, Vera Coking, from her home in Atlantic City. He wanted to build a limousine parking lot for one of his casinos on that spot, so he convinced a government agency to force her to sell her home for just 25 percent of what she had previously been offered for it. The agency was then to transfer ownership of the land to Trump.

Coking won her case in court, as it was a clear example of abuse of government’s eminent domain power, by which it can compel the sale of property for “public use.”