domain in order to clear the larger blighted area where it was located. Plaintiffs argued that this property was not slum housing and that it could not be taken for a project under the management of a private agency to be redeveloped for private use simply to make the community more attractive overall. The owners further argued that taking the land under eminent domain and giving it to redevelopers amounted to "a taking from one businessman for the benefit of another businessman" and did not constitute a public use, thus violating the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Morris died while the case was under review. His executors, including Samuel Berman, continued the case for the Morris estate. Berman's challenge to the constitutionality of the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act was heard by a special three-judge panel district court. The key issue addressed was the government's ability and scope to take and transfer private property to private developers as part of a project to clear blight from an entire area. E. Barrett Prettyman, the D.C. Circuit judge who wrote the opinion, found no problem with the government's use of eminent domain to clear blighted structures because it could be seen as the abatement of a public nuisance. However, Judge Prettyman saw the land on which the blighted structures were located as a different matter and as having nothing inherently to do with blight. Such land, he felt, could be taken by eminent domain only if it actually helped to combat the blight that existed on the property. Judge Prettyman ultimately read the Redevelopment Act very narrowly and found that non-blighted property could be taken if the taking could be tied to prevention of blight. He firmly stated, however, that eminent domain could not be used by the government to take private property for the purpose of improving economic or aesthetic conditions of neighborhoods. Therefore, he granted the government's motion to dismiss but also raised the seriousness of using eminent domain to serve broad redevelopment projects. Decision The Supreme Court unanimously decided in favor of the Planning Commission by arguing that the problem of large-scale blight needed to be addressed by a large-scale integrated redevelopment plan. Justice Douglas wrote, "If owner after owner were permitted to resist these redevelopment programs on the ground that his particular property was not being used against the public interest, integrated plans for redevelopment would suffer greatly."