Case Name: CITY OF OCALA, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. RED OAK FARM, INC., et al., Appellees/Cross-Appellants
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1996-04-12
Citations: 673 So. 2d 86
Docket Number: No. 94-1668
Parties: CITY OF OCALA, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. RED OAK FARM, INC., et al., Appellees/Cross-Appellants.
Judges: PETERSON, C.J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 673
Pages: 86–88

Head Matter:
CITY OF OCALA, Appellant/Cross-Appellee, v. RED OAK FARM, INC., et al., Appellees/Cross-Appellants.
No. 94-1668.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
April 12, 1996.
Rehearing Denied May 10, 1996.
Ann Melinda Craggs and William H. Phe-lan, Jr., of Bond, Arnett & Phelan, P.A., Ocala, for Appellant/Cross-Appellee.
Michael G. Takac, Gerard S. Rrehl and John W. Scruggs, Jr., of Forman, Krehl & Albright, Ocala, for Appellees/Cross-Appel-lants Gold Land Corporation, Harold B. Spinks and Patricia Spinks, Daytonapa Corporation, and Catherine Lee.
No Appearance for Appellee, Red Oak Farm, Inc.

Opinion:
GRIFFIN, Judge.
The City of Ocala ["City"] appeals final judgments in eminent domain awarding damages to several landowners [collectively "Red Oak"] with respect to four parcels of land over which the City took a perpetual easement for placement of a 230,000 volt electric transmission facility. The 50-foot wide easement was adjacent to a pre-existing 100-foot wide Florida Power Corporation ["FPC"] easement over the same parcels. The FPC easement was for a transmission facility which could be increased to a 500,000 volt facility. The City contends that the lower court made two erroneous evidentiary rulings which entitle it to a new trial. We agree as to one and reverse.
It was error for the lower court to refuse to admit the City's proffered evidence of FPC's recorded easements on the property adjacent to the property on which the City of Ocala was condemning a power easement. FPC power easements played a central role in the trial of this case. The experts for the City, as well as the experts for the landowners, principally relied on FPC's power easement history in valuing the City's easements and in evaluating the extent to which the City's easements would burden the remaining land. At issue in the case, both on the question of the valuation of the easement and the question of severance damages was the question whether the landowner would be allowed any use of the property over which the easement ran and whether there was severance damage to the affected parcels that resulted from the City easement and not from the previously existing FPC easement. The City's easement burdening the landowners' property was placed in evidence but the jury never was allowed to see the easements held by FPC. The City should have been allowed to put in evidence the public records that reflected the rights of FPC in respect to the affected parcels. See City of Miami Beach v. New Floridian Hotel, Inc., 324 So.2d 715 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976).
The landowners' position, as reflected in their experts' testimony, was that the City's easement had to be viewed as being more burdensome than an FPC easement because FPC had in place a formal, written policy and permitting procedure pursuant to which landowners could receive permission to make certain uses of the property. The landowners' experts took the position that the City's easement had to be valued as though it was more burdensome because the City had no written procedure. Indeed, this was apparently the first 230 KV line easement that the City had- acquired across private property. The landowners expended a good deal of effort eliciting testimony concerning the broad reach of the language of the City's easement and the fact that the City could enforce the easement's restrictive terms, notwithstanding the City's practice of permitting uses on easements that were not strictly within the terms of the easement.
The City's position was that its easement was no more restrictive or burdensome than FPC's easement since FPC's easement rights were basically the same as the City's. Even though the City had no written policy comparable to that of FPC, it offered evidence that it had a long-standing unwritten policy and track record of allowing a variety of uses comparable to those permitted by FPC. The City's expert based his opinions on the liberality of the City's unwritten policy, whereas the landowners based their analysis on the lack of a written policy. Based on our reading of this transcript, it appears that it was this latter fact that caused the trial court to be convinced by appellee's counsel that FPC's powerline easements were irrelevant. Although the lower court did an excellent job of ruling on the virtually endless number of other objections, the trial court got this one wrong. In light of all the testimony and cross-examination of the City's expert, it was certainly relevant to the jury's consideration that FPC's adjacent power easements were, by their terms, similar to those of the City. Indeed, the relevancy of this evidence is implicitly confirmed by the ferocity and tirelessness by which landowners' counsel labored to keep these easement documents out of evidence.
Nor can we agree that the broad discretion afforded the trial eourt, in excluding evidence whose probative value is outweighed by its prejudicial effect, offers an alternative basis for affirmance. The confusing and misleading inference that arose out of the fact that the jury was never informed of the parallels between the FPC and the City easements was the suggestion that FPC was obliged to permit the landowners virtually any non-obstructive use of the land burdened by FPC's easement whereas the City had taken a virtually unrestricted right to exclude any use of the easement burdened by the property. Given what this jury endured throughout the entire trial and the verdict it rendered, it is possible to guess but impossible to say that this error was harmless.
REVERSED and REMANDED.
PETERSON, C.J., concurs.
THOMPSON, J., dissents with opinion.
. Because of our disposition on the first issue, we need not address the second issue.