Connecticut is being slapped with a lawsuit over a nickel -- actually, quite a few nickels.
A group of beer and soda distributors is suing the state over unclaimed nickel deposits, CTNewsJunkie reports.
The distributors claim that the state’s attempt to retroactively take the deposits on cans and bottles violate their constitutional property rights.
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection are all being named as defendants in the lawsuit.
“Consistent with its purpose as an accounting and reporting mandate, the November Act did not provide that the funds deposited in the special accounts would cease to become the property of the plaintiffs, nor that they would become the property of the state,” James Robertson Jr., the lawyer for the bottle distributors, wrote in the lawsuit, according to CTNewsJunkie.
Blumenthal said that lawsuits based on takings claims commonly fail in Connecticut courts. But he said he would certainly fight this one "vigorously and aggressively," according to the Hartford Business Journal.
