Opinion ID: 1349516
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The majority's reading of Strom is unduly narrow.

Text: In Strom, this court held that evidence of construction-related interferences and loss of visibility to property following a partial taking was admissible not as a separate element of damages, but rather as evidence of the diminution in market value of the remainder. Id. at 560-62. In an attempt to harmonize its decision with Strom, the majority asserts that Strom is distinguishable because the damages must arise from changes in the land actually taken, and not merely from the impact of the construction project as a whole. However, Strom only supports this conclusion as it relates to the loss of visibility evidence. The majority presumably relied on the following passage from Strom  concluding that the construction-related damages in that case were not general damages  in asserting that the Strom court tied the evidence admitted to physical changes in the property: [I]n cases where there is a partial taking, the injured owner is not required to show that the injury is peculiar to his remaining property. It is sufficient that the damage is shown to have been caused by the taking of part of his property even though it is damage of a type suffered by the public as a whole. Id. at 560 (emphasis added). Although this passage undoubtedly ties the admissibility of the evidence to the partial taking, it is less clear that the court limited admissibility to evidence of damages arising from the state's use of the condemned property. This passage must be read in harmony with the text of the opinion as a whole. First, although the court explicitly stated in Strom that evidence of loss of visibility is admissible only when the diminished visibility results from changes on the property taken from the landowner, id. at 561, the court did not expressly place such a limitation on evidence of construction-related damages. Moreover, other passages in Strom appear to conflict with such a limitation, including the court's statement that [t]he construction-related problems visited upon the Woodbridge property are typical of the problems being experienced by other commercial properties located along the length of the reconstruction. Id. at 557. When we summarized our answer to the first certified question in Strom, we did not limit our holding to instances in which the damages arose from the state's use of the condemned portion of the plaintiff's property: We answer the first certified question in the affirmative: In a partial-taking condemnation action, evidence of construction-related interferences is admissible, not as a separate item of damages, but as a factor to be considered by the finder of fact in determining the diminution in market value of the remaining property. Strom, 493 N.W.2d at 560-61. This distinction is made clear when we compare this answer to the answer to the second certified question: In a partial-taking condemnation action, to the extent that loss of visibility to the public traveling on a redesigned highway results from changes in the property taken from the owner, evidence of the loss is admissible, not as a separate item of damages, but as a factor to be considered by the finder of fact in determining the diminution in market value of the remaining property. Id. at 561-62 (emphasis added). Notably, Strom cites with approval the decision of the Missouri Supreme Court in State ex rel. State Highway Comm'n v. Nickerson, 578 S.W.2d 916, 918 (Mo.1979). In Nickerson, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed and remanded when the lower court had refused to admit, under the state's before and after rule, evidence of the impact of the loss of traffic on the market value of property due to the relocation of a highway. Id. at 919. The Missouri court held that by limiting the evidence in this manner, the lower court had asked the jury to value a hypothetical 2.11 acre tract and not the actual remaining property. Id. at 918. Nowhere did the Nickerson court tie the admissibility of the evidence of loss of access to the state's use of the condemned portion of the landowner's property. Consequently, I conclude that Strom stands for a broader proposition than that evidence of severance damages is never admissible unless the damages arise directly from the state's use of the condemned portion of a landowner's property.