Case ID: us-ct-cl_58/html/0400-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

JOHN BEERY v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [No. 17-A.
    Decided May 28, 1923.]
    
      On the Proofs.
    
    
      Eminent domain; just compensation; interest. — See Grymes v. United States, ante, p. 808.
    
    
      The Reporter's statement of the case :
    
      Mr. Alvin T. Enibrey for the plaintiff.
    
      Mr. Frank B. Grosthwaite, with whom was Mr. Assistant Attorney General Robert II. Lovett, for the defendant.
    The following are the facts of the case as found by the court:
    I. The plaintiff, up to June 10, 1918, was owner in fee simple of a tract of land, with improvements thereon, on Machodack Creek, at Dahlgren, King George County, Virginia, consisting of a home tract of 100 acres and a 25-acre wood lot. Nineteen and a half acres of the home tract are described by metes and bounds in the petition.
    II. The President of the United States, under authority of the act of April 26, 1918, 40 Stat. 537, by proclamation, dated June 10, 1918, 40 Stat. 1790, 1792, described by metes and bounds certain lands and improvements, including 19.5 acres of plaintiff’s home tract described in Finding I, on Machodack Creek, at Dahlgren, King George County, Virginia, and took title and possesion of said lands for military purposes and warned the owners to vacate the same before July, 1918. The plaintiff, in obedience to the proclamation of the President, vacated and surrendered possession of said 19.5 acres to the United States on June 10, 1918.
    III. Pursuant to said statute and proclamation an award was made by the board, acting for the President, in favor of the plaintiff, in the sum of $977.50.
    IV. The amount so awarded was not satisfactory to the plaintiff who, pursuant to the act of April 20, 1918, supra, elected to receive 75 per centum of said award and bring suit in the Court of Claims. The United States accordingly on January 4, 1921, paid to plaintiff $733.13, being 75 per centum of said award, which is all that he has been paid for the 19.5 acres taken by the Government for military purposes, as set forth in Finding II.
    V. The plaintiff’s said property taken by the Government as stated was on June 10, 1918, of the fair and reasonable value of $1,706.25. Computing interest on this sum at the rate of 6 per centum per annum from the date plaintiff’s possession ended, June 10, 1918, to the date of judgment, May 28, 1928, amounting to $508.46, and adding this to the said value as a convenient method of ascertaining the just compensation to which plaintiff is entitled, gives as the aggregate of these sums $2,214.71. Deducting from this aggregate the amount paid by the Government on the 4th day of January, 1921, $783.13 (being 75 per centum of the amount fixed by the President), and allowing interest on said payment at 6 per cent per annum from the date thereof, January 4, 1921, to the date of judgment, May 28, 1923, $105.57, leaves the sum of $1,376.01 as the balance of the just compensation to which the plaintiff is entitled for his property taken as aforesaid.
   MEMORANDUM BY THE COURT.

The court applies the principle announced in Seaboard Air Line Ry. Go. case, 261 U. S. 299.

It adopts as a convenient method of fixing just compensation the addition of interest for the time elapsing' between the date plaintiff lost possession and the date of judgment, allowing, however, interest on the payment made by the Government.

Judgment for the plaintiff in the sum of $1,376.01.