Opinion ID: 2405402
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: separation of taking and resulting damages

Text: It will be noticed that the method or formula hereinbefore outlined makes on provision for separately determining and stating the taking damages and the resulting damages. The omission is intentional. There could be several reasons for not making such a determination in cases involving leased property, one of which might be that attempts to separate taking damage to a lease interest from resulting damages to such interest almost inevitably will result in confusion, as illustrated by the verdict in the instant case which allowed the lessees $28,350 as damages for the portion of the leased property taken while allowing the landowners only $5,175 for that portion, and which awarded the lessees $4,150 as resulting damages whereas under the evidence all of the damages claimed by the lessees were really resulting damages. However, the conclusion we have reached, for the reasons hereinafter set forth, is that there should be no separate determination and fixing of taking and resulting damages in any condemnation case, whether involving leased property or not. For a great many years the railroad condemnation statutes have required the commissioners in the county court, and the jury in circuit court, to determine and fix separately the taking damages and the resulting damages. KRS 416.020, 416.050. The highway condemnation statute makes such requirement of the commissioners in county court but not of the jury in circuit court. KRS 177.083, 177.087. However, it seems to have been assumed by the bar and the bench that the requirement does apply to juries in circuit court in highway condemnation cases. The requirement in the railroad law was made by the legislature at least as early as 1882, prior to the adoption of Section 242 of the present constitution. See Asher v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 87 Ky. 391, 8 S.W. 854. However, since the measure of damages where part of a tract of land is taken has always been the difference in market value of the tract before and after the taking (it being so held as early as Elizabethtown & Paducah R. Co. v. Helm, 8 Bush 681) there never was a reason to require a separate fixing of taking and resulting damages, except possibly as it might involve questions relating to the offsetting of benefits. But it appears that Kentucky has never followed the rule prevailing in some states (see 18 Am.Jur., Eminent Domain, Sec. 301, p. 946) that benefits may be set off against resulting damages but not against taking damages. The opinion in Broadway Coal Mining Co. v. Smith, 136 Ky. 725, 125 S.W. 157, 26 L.R.A.,N.S., 565, referring to decisions prior to the present Constitution, not only shows that Kentucky never permitted offsetting of benefits against damages under former Constitutions (except as to an illusory category of consequential injury and inconvenience  about which we shall have more to say later), but it states unequivocally that under the present Constitution, particularly Section 242, there can be no offsetting of benefits against damages. Not only is there no discernible reason for a separate determination of taking damages and resulting damages, but in our opinion to require or permit the jury to make such a determination results in the use by the jury of approaches to the question of damages that depart from the true measure of damages (difference in market value) and which are not valid and sometimes are completely artificial. As to taking damages, it causes the jury to attempt to put sale values on things that are never sold voluntarily, such as a 50-foot strip across the front of a farm, or, as in the instant case, a 25-foot strip across the front of a drive-in restaurant. As to resulting  damages, it results in valuations based on costs of restoration or on vague considerations of the harm that has been done to the particular owner in his particular use of the property. It appears that much of the trouble that has arisen in our condemnation cases has resulted from an attempt by this Court to compromise the true measure of damages (difference in market value) with the prescribed or assumed statutory requirement that the jury separately determine and state the taking damages and the resulting damages. The compromise has taken the form of prescribed instructions to the jury that the measure of damages is the difference in market value, but that the jury shall separately fix the taking damages and the resulting damages, the total of which shall not exceed the difference in market value. See Commonwealth v. Combs, 244 Ky. 204, 50 S.W.2d 497; Kentucky Water Service Co. v. Bird, Ky., 239 S.W.2d 66. The trouble with this is that it does not require the jury to fix the difference in market value. Verdicts simply stating the taking damages and the resulting damages have been accepted and upheld if the total allowance did not exceed the highest credible evidence of difference in market value. We think this is completely unsound, because the court cannot know what the jury really thought was the difference in market value. It seems clear that the difference in market value is a fact that must be found by the jury, and verdicts making separate awards for taking damages and resulting damages should not have been upheld simply because the total did not exceed what the jury could have found was the difference in market value. The simple fact is that the jury is not going to govern itself by the proper measure of damages unless the jury is required to return a verdict specifically applying that measure. Orgel points out that attempts to separate taking damages from resulting damages, particularly where the courts have said (as this Court has said) that the land taken must be valued as a part of or in relation to the whole tract, result in the finding of nonexistent values and in the duplication of damages. Further, the attempted separation is based on the fallacy that the value of a whole can be spread out and apportioned. He says: This fallacy may be avoided in the partial-taking cases, however, for a way out of the difficulty is open, namely, the abandonment of the attempt to find the separate value of the part taken, in favor of the rule that recovery should be based on the difference between the value of the whole before and after the taking. The adoption by all courts of this rule should be far less confusing to a jury and would probably avoid a very practical objection that may be urged against the more popular rule of `value of the part taken plus damages to remainder'  the objection that a jury may include in `damages to the remainder' a part of the very injury which it incorporates in `value of the part taken'. 1 Orgel, Valuation Under Eminent Domain, Sec. 52, p. 238. Orgel further states that the before and after rule is the only logical rule and that the rule requiring separation of taking damages and resulting damages is based upon artificial dichotomy. 1 Orgel, Valuation Under Eminent Domain, Sec. 51, p. 236. Also, he explains how adherence to the before and after rule would eliminate problems arising from claims that taking of frontage should be specially compensated for even though the landowner, after the condemnation, will still have the same amount of frontage. 1 Orgel, Valuation Under Eminent Domain, Sec. 64, p. 296. Nichols says:    the simplicity of the application of the before and after rule commends itself to the courts as the method most likely to attain a result that is fair both to the condemnor and the condemnee. 4 Nichols on Eminent Domain, Sec. 14.232(1), p. 555.  Our considered conclusion is that the jury should not be required, or even permitted, to fix separately the taking damages and the resulting damages. The true basis for this conclusion is that there really are not any such things as taking damages and resulting damages. The only damage is the difference in market value before and after the taking, and that is the only issue to be submitted to the jury. (We exclude such things as temporary construction easements, which are in a separate category.) This conclusion does not mean that evidence may not be introduced as to various factors that will reduce the value of the remaining land. But these factors are merely to be considered as they may affect the difference in market value before and after the taking. See Greenup County v. Redmond, Ky., 335 S.W.2d 335. Evidence of factors bearing on diminution of value should be addressed to how they will affect market value and not how they will hurt the owner or make less advantageous the use of the property for his particular purposes, or create conditions that he would like to remedy. And no price should be put on the individual factors. Commonwealth Dept. of Highways v. Stamper, Ky., 345 S.W.2d 640; Commonwealth, Dept. of Highways v. Tyree, Ky., 365 S.W.2d 472 (decided March 1, 1963). We consider that the form of the verdict in condemnation cases is a matter of procedure and not of substantive law. Under Chapter 18 of the Acts of 1952 (KRS 447.154, 447.156) the legislature has recognized the supreme authority of this Court in the field of judicial procedure. Accordingly, the statutory requirement in the railroad condemnation law that the jury in circuit court shall separately fix the taking and resulting damages (there is no such express requirement in the highway condemnation law) must yield to the determination of this Court, here made, that such is improper procedure. Furthermore, it is our opinion that the statutory requirement tends to produce verdicts awarding more than just compensation and thus is in violation of Sections 13 and 242 of the Constitution, which are designed to protect the condemnor as well as the condemnee. See Chesapeake & O. Canal Co. v. Key, 3 Cranch, C.C. 559, Fed.Cas.No.2,649, where Chief Justice Cranch said: Just compensation means a compensation that would be just in regard to the public, as well as in regard to the individual;   .