165 N.Y. 572 | NY | 1901
This was an equitable action, brought by the plaintiff to restrain the operation of the defendants’ elévated railway in Pearl street, in the city of Eew York, in front of her properties, known as Eos. 78 and 80 Wall street and Eo. 158 Pearl street, unless compensation be-made for the appropriation of easements and wherein she asked for the rental damages sustained in the past. The properties formed the northeast corner of Wall and Pearl streets; the building on the Pearl street lot having been united with the building on the Wall street lots, so as to give a common frontage upon the latter street. The plaintiff recovered, in the usual form of judgment against the defendants, in the alternative, awarding rental damages and fixing the fee damage, or compensation, to be paid to avoid the issuance of the injunction, and the judgment was affirmed at the Appellate Division. Upon this appeal, the questions presented concern the finding as to' the plaintiff’s title and certain exceptions to rulings of the trial judge.
The contention as to the title relates to the rear of the lot known as Eo. 78 Wall street, as to an irregular portion of which it is said that the plaintiff proved no record title and can, therefore, make no effective conveyance. Prior to the year 1870, there was not shown to be a title of record to this irregular piece of land by metes and bounds; but possession was shown from 1851, when the Seamen’s Bank for Savings acquired the property. In that year, the building now upon Eos. 78 and 80 Wall street, was erected and when, in 1871, the Seamen’s Bank conveyed the property-to the Marine Bank, the deed of conveyance included the irregular plot in question by metes and bounds. In the deed to the Seamen’s Bank of
The appellants contend that there was error committed by the trial judge in the reception of evidence, upon the cross-examination of the defendants’ witness Meyer. Meyer had been examined for the defendants, as an expert witness upon realty values, and, upon his cross-examination, testified that “ the four corners of Wall street are an equality. The O’Sullivan corner and this corner are sister values. It is the opposite corner. In 1896 I testified in reference to the property opposite, the O’Sullivan property. I gave the value of the O’Sullivan property in 1873 at $235,000, while I gave the value of the plaintiff’s property, to-day; as $220,000 in 1873.” Plaintiff’s counsel then proceeded to question him as to why he put a higher value on the O’Sullivan property, than on the plaintiff’s, in 1873, in view of what he had said about the street corners, and he was asked as to the separate values of the buildings and the land. Then he was asked the following questions: “ In the O’Sullivan case did you not testify that the O’Sullivan property was, without the buildings, worth,
Another error, which the appellants argue, as having been committed upon the trial, was with respect to the examination of the witness Eead ; an expert called by the plaintiff upon the question of values. He had been examined as to the general course of values of property in the neighborhood and he had testified that it had been upward, except in the immediate vicinity of this building and upon Pearl street. He testified, without objection, that “there is a special value in a Wall street corner, as distinct from the values of the
No other questions were pressed upon us, nor demand consideration upon this appeal.
The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.
Parker, Ch. J., O’Brien, Landon, Cullen and Werner, JJ., concur; Haight, J., not voting.
Judgment affirmed.