248 Pa. 179 | Pa. | 1915
Opinion by
This is an appeal by the plaintiffs from a judgment entered on the verdict of a jury for damages arising from the taking of land by the defendant under its right of eminent domain. *
Only two questions involved are stated for our consideration, and they may be summarized thus: (1) Whether certain tax assessments on the land in controversy, made immediately prior to this time of the taking, should have been admitted in evidence, the plaintiffs having paid the taxes so assessed; (2) Whether the court below abused its discretion in not granting a new trial,
The appellants contend that the tax assessments should have been admitted, and submitted to the'jury as some evidence of value, on the general principle that “a declaration made by a party against his interest is admissible as against him,” and they base their argument on the assumption that the City of Philadelphia either actually made or, in effect, adopted the tax assessments in question. The answer to the argument that the- city made the assessments is to be found in the recent case of Selig v. Philadelphia, 232 Pa. 309, where the method of assessing taxes in. Philadelphia is elaborately discussed and it is ruled that such taxes are assessed by a “State Agency” under a system established by the Commonwealth and administered through public officers (see Richie v. Philadelphia, 225 Pa. 511, 516) appointed by “a State Department whose rulings are subject to appeal ......to the courts of the Commonwealth,” and that the city officials have no jurisdiction in the matter whatever. As to the theory of adoption, we. see no merit in the argument that, because the city received taxes based on these assessments and they were used in determining its borrowing capacity, the municipality in effect adopted them as an expression of its own estimate of the value of the plaintiffs’ land; for no corporate body can properly be held to have adopted the action of another independent public agency by merely giving such recognition thereto as the law compels it to render.
Although certain excerpts, in the most part dicta, from some of the opinions called to our attention by counsel for the appellants (see Smith v. Penna. Co., 141 Pa. 68, 72; Miller v. Windsor Co., 148 Pa. 429, 439; Philadelphia v. Gowen, 202 Pa. 453, 457) give a shadow of support to their contention in favor of the admissibility of
In support of the appellants’-contention that the second question stated at the head of this opinion should be answered in the afflrmatiye they argue that, to their prejudice, counsel for the defendant repeatedly breached a recent ruling of this court regulating the cross-examination of expert witnesses; citing Roberts v. Philadelphia, 239 Pa. 339, 341. There is nothing in the opinion in the Roberts case which, in any manner, or to any degree, altered or was intended to change the established rules relating to the examination of expert witnesses; in fact, our Brother Stewart practically there so states in his reference (p. 342) to Rea v. Pittsburgh Co., 229 Pa. 106. On several occasions we have held that, where an expert states he bases his estimate of the value of the property affected upon prices obtained on sales of “similarly located land in the same neighborhood,” he may be cross-
• In the Roberts case the rule as we have just stated it was breached in more than one particular; there, under the guise of cross-examination, counsel arbitrarily attempted to get in evidence the prices brought at salesother than those mentioned by the witness as the foundation of his valuation. The’ particular sales inquired about in that case not only had not been referred to in the direct examination of plaintiffs’ experts, but, in some instances, they were of land not similarly located, whereas, here, in practically every instance, the sales referred to by counsel for the defendant were those which had first been brought into the case by counsel for the plaintiffs, on the direct examination of their leading expert witnesses, as sales of similarly located properties which “would most favorably compare” with the property of
Finally, since the court below saw the witnesses and had a better opportunity to judge the value of their testimony than we, and since, by refusing a new tidal, that tribunal has indicated its satisfaction with the verdict, we are not convinced that this is a case which calls for the exercise of the extraordinary power to grant a new trial given to this court by the Act of May 20,1891, P. L. 101; for, as we have often said, this power is “exceptional in character and only to be exercised in.very clear cases of wrong”: Stevenson v. Ebervale Coal Co., 203 Pa.
The assignments of error are all overruled and the judgment is affirmed.