The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-01-03

after such reasonable use as he may
| choose to make of it, from his premises
below That is not power
Now what is the rule for assessing
| damages for depriving the owner of
real estate of an easement appurtenant
| 60 it. The supreme court has settled
| it. 1t is not the value of anything
taken that we are to determine; it is
the injury to something else. No two
estates are exact in all their conditions;
and the injury to no two estates by di-
yerting the same quantity of water can
| be exactly the same.
They would have you believe that
nearly two million dollars was sudden
| ly distracted from the value of the
manufacturing property bordering on
this little stream and appropriated TO a
totally different public use. That, so
far as the manufacturing interests of
this Blackstone valley are concerned,
It is as if a great fire had swept off
! $2,OOO,O00 worth of the property without
! insurance. 1t is not heard of any
where else in this court room Nobody
learns that the valuation of Millbury
or OF Norhoridge or Grafton or Black
stone or Leicester has shrunk. No
body learns that a mill has been of
fered for sale for a dollar less than be-
fore. None of these men are heard of
gong to the assessors for a reduction
IN their valuation. or to the state house
Tor reduction in the estimated value
OF their real estate.
| Mr. Chairman, if one of my brother
| Goulding's clients could sell fer $50 or
$40 or 500 g. horse power a year. the
water power he'd nave had If we had
not made this diversion, he can sell
Tor precisely the same price the steam
power he will get with the money we
propose to pay him on our method of
assessing damages.
! III we have taken from the Stevens
grist mill or from the Whitins any
easement appurtenant to their prop
i erty by which they had power either
to use or to SELL we ex-
pect to give them money enough to
replace the difference in the
market value Of their property by the
disturbance Of that easement And
that is one way to estimate their dam
ages. If they don't like that way of
putting it, although it is the way the
supreme court says it is to be put, then
Wen give them money enough to pro-
cure the same amount CT power, either
to be sold or to be used, and then they
are absolutely as well off. and there we
think we have a right to ask you to
! stop.
j A man who has got $50 horse power
of which he can sell five at a large
i price under special circumstances,
when he couldn't begin to sell the rest
for any such sum- has no right to come
in here and ask you 10 take the price
of the five as he sold it in the market
for the measure of damages. All he
i can ask is that we replace what we
nave taken We give him a sum of
money which in law is equivalent. But
brother Goulding goes a little further.
He wants us to pay him a sum of
money which will pay him for all time,
! for thousand, for a hundred thou
sand years to come. That we decline
to do.
They say it will cost them certain
sums to replace the water power they
have lost. We are not obliged to re-
place it for them. There is no rule of
law that requires the city to replace
, 1t or to pay the owner the damage to
, the fair market value. We are not to
give him what he had before We are
to make him worth in money as much
as he was before. Now If his property
! will bring as much at a sale as it
: would before the taking, he is as rich
as he was before. He is not 10 be paid
} for pecuniary loss he never suffered.
Now we wish to submit to your judg-
ment our conception as to the rule Of
: damages and method of procedure.
EaCn OF IneSe petitioners is TO De maze
good He is to have q sum of money
which, added to what he has got left,
: makes him just as rich no more or less,
than he would have been If nothing had
! been taken. Neither party is to make
a profit from the transaction.
AS the courts have said, the final test
: is difference in market value. But there
: are some Inquiries which we agree are
great helps.
: in finding out the difference in the mar
; ket value of property like these mills
caused by taking from them an ease
ment annexed to real estate. One in
: quiry is as to what it would cost to
: replace the thing taken. Another in
: qulry is what the thing taken or the
: products of the thing taken would
: themselves sell for in the market. Both
these inquiries you have admitted in
t this case, but certainly neither of these
r tests is decisive. If you pay one of
these plaintiffs a sum of money with
r which he can replace the thing taken,
S or buy an equivalent that must be the
4 outside limit of his just damages
. We respectfully submit that you
come back to the courts rule, market
S value" An estate cannot be improved
, by taking part to an amount greater
7 than the value OF the whole. And that
4 cannot be a correct method Of getting
2 at the value of part which If applied