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June 12, 2024

Oklahoma Supreme Court declines to allow nuisance law to be used as a policymaking remedy for historical wrongs

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 prompted a lawsuit filed in 2020 in state district court alleging that the events of the Massacre constituted and created an ongoing public and private nuisance. Plaintiffs --survivors of that tragedy-- sought a broad range of abatement remedies, such as relocation of an interstate highway, replacement of all structures and institutions destroyed in the Massacre, including businesses, homes, schools and a hospital, and immunity of all descendants of those affected by the Massacre from any form of City and State taxation, in perpetuity. It was reported that billions of dollars were at stake.

Following three rounds of motions to dismiss that narrowed the parties to the case and their claims, the district court eventually dismissed all claims of the remaining plaintiffs. On appeal, including an hour of oral arguments, the Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed: "...even accepting as true Plaintiffs' claim that the lingering economic and social consequences of the Massacre still, to some extent, endanger the comfort and repose of the Greenwood and North Tulsa communities, those lingering consequences over one-hundred years later, standing alone, do not constitute a public nuisance, as that term has been construed by this Court. The continuing blight alleged within the Greenwood community born out of the Massacre implicates generational-societal inequities that can only be resolved by policymakers--not the courts."  Randle v. City of Tulsa et al, 2024 OK 40.