Opinion ID: 2341531
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Points V and VI

Text: Appellant, in this issue, contests Finding No. 18, which states that it (the court) was not satisfied that a business loss was sustained from the taking. Quite obviously the trial court would have to have found by a contradictory finding that Green Mountain was transacting business on the lands taken before it could have found a business loss. The trial court, as we have held, properly found no business was conducted on the lands taken. Factual support for the finding is clearly demonstrated by the record, for example, from the use to which the land taken was being put. The weight of the evidence was for the court to decide. V.R.C. P. 52. Appellant also uses Record v. Vermont State Highway Board, 121 Vt. 230, 154 A.2d 475 (1959), in support of the proposition that the trial court should have considered the capitalization of income approach to valuation. This approach is not applicable here since the most reasonable use of the property, as the court found, was for residential purposes, not for business purposes. And further the Baronial quarry was neither used in the business nor did it contribute income to the company's operation. In any event, the application of capitalization of income to measure market value lacks appropriate factual support in the evidence. Here, the appellant is attempting to use the testimony of Mr. Hyatt, a retired executive of Georgia Marble Company, of an operating profit of $186,000. for 1966 on the capitalization of income theory but they are not necessarily the same. Profits from a business can be extremely uncertain, speculative and depend on many contingencies and do not determine the value of land. The finding goes to the weight of the evidence and it is not for this Court to disturb the conclusion of the court below on this factual issue. And the plaintiff argues under its Exception No. VI that the figures arrived at by the court in Finding No. 21 which it uses to demonstrate the fallaciousness of the valuations of Hyatt and Looney were erroneous. However that may be, the fact still remains that before these figures (or corrected ones, if wrong) could be used the court would have to have found that business was conducted upon the lands taken.