Vera Coking

Vera Coking
Occupation	Homeowner

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

In 1961, Coking and her husband bought the property at 127 South Columbia Place as a summertime retreat for $20,000.

In the 1970s, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered Coking $1 million for her property in order to build the Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. She declined the offer, and Guccione started construction of the hotel-casino in 1978 around the Coking house, but ran out of money in 1980 and construction stopped. The steel framework structure was finally torn down in 1993.

In 1993, Donald Trump bought several lots around his Atlantic City casino and hotel, intending to build a parking lot designed for limousines. Coking, who had lived in her house at that time for 32 years, refused to sell. 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 Guccione had offered her 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.

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