239 Pa. 339 | Pa. | 1913
Lead Opinion
Opinion by
This case .does not present a single fact which differentiates it from the general class to which it properly belongs, and yet it will be found most exceptional with respect to the result reached. It was an appeal from the award of a jury of view in a condemnation proceeding, and the only question to be determined was the amount of damage the owner was entitled to recover. In widening and regrading Castor avenue the city had appropriated between two and three acres of plaintiff’s land, and it was claimed that incidentally the market value of the remainder of the property had been seriously impaired by reason of the increased elevation of the surface of the street. The plaintiff called seven witnesses to support his claim. All testified to large impairment in market value as a result of the city’s improvement, the lowest estimate given by any of them being $32,000 and the highest $46,000.00. The defendant called no witnesses. The case was submitted to the jury, and the verdict returned was for $4,065.00. We express no opinion as to the sufficiency of the verdict to afford just compensation to the plaintiff. It may or may not be sufficient. With that question we have no concern; but this appeal makes it our concern to inquire as to how this most unusual result, a verdict directly in the face of the only evidence in the case, was reached. The error of the trial judge complained of in the first, second and third assignments, the only error properly assigned, will not in itself explain the result reached, though it was evidently not without its share of contribution. These assignments complain of the overruling of plaintiff’s objections in the cross-examination to certain questions put to plaintiff’s witnesses, who in their testimony in chief had given their estimate of the market value of plaintiff’s land before and after the city’s work of improve
The remaining assignments relate to the instructions given by the court in its general charge. Inasmuch as no exception was taken to the charge, these assignments are dismissed; but since the matters therein complained of must have largely contributed to the strange result a word of comment may avoid repetition of the error here committed on the retrial of the case. The appropriation by the city was something less than three acres out of a tract of about sixty acres. At the time of the appropriation the tract was unimproved ground, and was used for farming purposes. The testimony was that the section of the city in which it was located was rapidly growing, that this particular property was ripe - for development into city building lots, and had a largely increased market value by reason of this fact. There was entire concurrence of view' among the witnesses called, seven of them, each having qualified himself to speak as an expert, that such consideration would influence the general buyer in the open market, and each witness based his own estimate of depreciation, apart from the value of the land actually taken, on the interference the city appropriation would cause with the proper and suitable development of the property along the line indicated as the probable use for which it was made available. The defendant offered no testimony to the contrary. With respect to this feature of the case the trial judge charged as follows: “Now, that, gentlemen, is the very important question for you to consider in this case. In the first place, is their estimate of the value of the property correct, or approximately correct? You have been there and you have seen this property. We think that it may be concluded from the testimony that, as it lies, it has the appearance of being a farm. You were there and you saw it. What are the reasonable uses to which it can be put? How did it appear to you?
The judgment is reversed with a venire facias de novo.
Dissenting Opinion
Dissenting Opinion by
February 24, 1913:
I dissent from so much of the opinion as deals with the charge of the court below.
Mr. Justice Potter joins in above dissent.