Opinion ID: 1666570
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Right to Condemn.

Text: The landowners argue that the court erred in ruling that the issue of the right to condemn had been determined on March 21, 1960, and in refusing, on April 11, 1960, to allow landowners to introduce evidence in opposition to the state's right to condemn. As we understand it, the landowners' reasons in support of this argument are comprehended in the following excerpts from their brief: The trial Court's position has cut a trial into two segments, one vitiated by a mistrial and the other untouched, unaffected. Our decisions require that the preliminary question of the right to condemn is to be decided outside the presence of the jurybut in the same trial. Nothing passes by mere implication in a condemnation suit; the statute must be followed. City of Birmingham v. Brown, Supra [241 Ala. 203, 2 So.2d 305].   .         . A mistrial is no trial. Hallman v. State, Supra [36 Ala.App. 592, 61 So.2d 857; cert. den. 258 Ala. 278, 61 So.2d 861]. This would mean that the trial of March 21, 1960 was reduced to a nullity. The trial of April 11, 1960 is the trial with which we are concerned. It stands on its own record, in total independence of the trial of March 21, 1960. If a mistried case had any salvage value or was valid for any purpose then it would not be a nullity; it would have the attributes of what our statutes endowed it with. But our statutes breathe no aspect of survival in any part of a mistried case. Certainly a condemnation case, the taking of private property against the will of the owner, is not an appropriate patient for this fantastic surgery. (Par. Added.) We do not agree. This court has announced the following rule: We hold therefore, that upon appeal to the Circuit Court under section 7492, Code of 1923 [§ 17, Title 19, Code 1940], from an order of condemnation entered by the Probate Court, the interlocutory order granting the application to condemn is reviewable; and, further, that the petitioner's right to condemn shall be determined by the court without the aid of the jury, while the amount of damages or compensation to be assessed is a question exclusively for the jury. Mobile & Birmingham R. R. Co. v. Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co., supra [192 Ala. 136, 68 So. 905]. (Par. Added.) City of Birmingham v. Brown, 241 Ala. 203, 207, 2 So.2d 305, 308. Appellants do not insist that the evidence was not sufficient to support the finding on March 21, 1960, that the state had a right to condemn this land. Appellants had been afforded one trial of the issue on the right to condemn. There was no mistrial on that issue. That issue is to be tried separately from the trial on the issue of the amount of the award. The mistrial on the latter issue did not vitiate the trial on the first issue. Even if it be conceded arguendo that the appellants be correct in asserting that the two issues must be tried in the same trial, it does not follow that the two issues must be tried on the same day or on consecutive days. In actions at law, the sufficiency of pleadings is ordinarily decided by the court, whereas, sometimes weeks later, the questions of liability and amount of damages may be determined by a jury. A mistrial by the jury would not, as a general rule, vitiate rulings on pleadings, in the absence of amendments thereto, and would not ordinarily require the court to determine again the sufficiency of pleadings. So in the instant case, the mistrial on the issue of amount of award did not require the court to try again the issue of the right to condemn. Assignments 1, 3, 4, and 9 are not sustained.