Case ID: mass_62/html/0600-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Dewey, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Elijah W. Upton & others vs. The South Reading Branch Railroad Company.
    In estimating the damages occasioned by taking land for a railroad, any direct and peculiar benefit or increase of value, occasioned to land of the same owner adjoining or connected with the land taken, is to be allowed by way of set-off; but not any general benefit or increase of value, received by such land in common with other lands in the neighborhood; and when the sheriff instructed the jury, that if the owner of land, which by reason of the benefits derived from the railroad was as valuable as before, was entitled to no damages, the verdict was set aside.
    In estimating the damages caused by the construction of a railroad, evidence that the respondents had made the petitioner an offer for his damages is inadmissible.
    This was a proceeding before a sheriff’s jury, to estimate the damage sustained by the petitioners, in consequence of the taking of the petitioners’ land by the respondents for the use of their road.
    At the hearing before the sheriff, he ruled that the measure of damages was the depreciation of the market value of the estate, by reason of the location of the railroad; and that if the estate was as valuable in the market with the road, by reason of the benefits derived therefrom, the petitioners were not entitled to recover any damages.
    The petitioners offered to prove that the respondents had made them an offer for their damages; but the sheriff ruled, that the evidence was inadmissible.
    To these rulings the petitioners alleged exceptions; and, the verdict being accepted by the court of common pleas, appealed to this court.
    
      
      W. D. Northend, for the petitioners.
    
      O. P. Lord, for the respondents.
   Dewey, J.

The ruling of this court in the case oí ffleacham v. Fitchburg Railroad Co. 4 Cush. 291, upon the instructions given to the jury in that case by the presiding officer, must govern the present case. The jury were in that case instructed, that if they were satisfied that the laying out and construction of the railroad had occasioned any benefit or ad vantage to the lands of the petitioner through which the road passed, or lands immediately adjoining, or connected therewith, rendering the part not taken for the railroad more convenient or useful to the petitioner, or giving it some peculiar increase in value, compared with other lands generally in the vicinity, it would be the duty of the jury to allow for such benefit or increase of value, by way of set-off, in favor of the railroad company; but, on the other hand, if the construction of the railroad, by increasing the convenience of the people of the town generally, as a place for residence, and by its anticipated and probable effect in increasing the population, business and general prosperity of the place, had been the occasion of an increase in the salable value of real estate generally, near the station, including the petitioner’s land, and thereby occasioning a benefit or advantage to him in common with other owners of real estate in the vicinity, this benefit was too contingent, indirect and remote, to be brought into consideration in settling the question of damages to the petitioner for taking his particular parcel of land. Instructions substantially like the above should have been given to the jury in this case. To this extent the instructions were wrong, and for this cause the verdict is to be set aside.

The evidence offered by the petitioners, to show that the respondents had made a certain offer to them for their damages, was properly rejected. New trial ordered.