Court Opinion

ID: 9682210
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 08:07:42.888582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:38.084590
License: Public Domain

REAVLEY, Justice
(dissenting).
The Court holds that evidence of actual damage (including cost of repair) to the remainder of the owner’s land, which occurs during condemnor’s construction, is admissible in the condemnation trial to prove the landowner’s recoverable damages. That will not confine the landowner to the difference in the market value immediately before and after the taking by the con-demnor. What was reasonably foreseeable to prospective buyers of Spindor’s lake and land on the date of taking was one picture; the actual damage suffered some nine months later is a different one.
The result in this case seems to be fair enough to these parties. My concern is with our change of the rule without dealing with the problems of precedent and the trial of future cases. If we intend to allow the landowner to recover all damages that he suffers because of the condemnor’s taking and construction — right up to the date of the trial of the condemnation case, we should say so. Such a rule should be justified against the statutes, particularly Art. 3265. It seems to me that we would then be prescribing one rule of damages for the commissioners and a different rule for the trial after appeal of the commissioners’ award.
Surely our rule will work for the con-demnor when events go his way. If construction is completed by the time of the trial and if there has been no rain or harm to the lake, that fact will now be admissible as the answer to the landowner’s proof that the market value of his land on the date of taking allowed little value for his lake because of foreseen results of construction.
What do we do about the neighbor-con-demnee down the pipeline who may have his case come to trial after Spindor’s lake is full of dirt but before the construction crew have reached the neighbor and his lake? Will he be allowed to prove what is “foreseeable” in the sense of the writing by the majority, or will we restrict him to the Carpenter rule and his market value loss on the date of the taking?
If we were dealing here with suits for compensation of the landowner for damages suffered during construction, we might well rewrite a number of our present rules. Evidence of actual damage during construction, either caused by negligent or non-negligent conduct, might be made admissible in those suits. The present case is a condemnation case, however, and under the statute and the rule that fixes the landowner’s damage at the change in market value on the date of taking, I must agree with the decision of the Court of Civil Appeals.
WALKER, J., joins in this dissent.