Court Opinion

ID: 9661371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:37:19.702715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:27.964217
License: Public Domain

Justice Garwood,
joined by Justice Smedley and Chief Justice Hickman, dissenting.
Our decision here recalls — somewhat sadly — the good words with which we began the dedication of the new State Bar Building: “* * * for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” We require the unhappy condemnee to repeat a long and expensive jury trial because of purely formal errors in the charge for which our own previous statements of the law and the trial tactics of the condemnor City in the instant case are to no small extent responsible, and though making a rather studied bow to the doctrine of harmless error, actually reverse because of the difference between “should” and “would.”
We of this court, who among ourselves have come to regard State v. Carpenter as a sort of bible, may perhaps properly be shocked that the courts below (a) spoke of “market value” in terms of current market price (like the price of cotton on a cotton exchange) as distinguished from the hypothetical willing buyer — willing seller price value, which State v. Carpenter calls “market value”; (b) labelled the hypothetical willing buyer-willing seller price value as “intrinsic”; and (c) submitted this “intrinsic value” question only contingently upon a finding that no “market value” in terms of current market price actually ex*337isted, instead of submitting it (according to the Carpenter case) as the only issue and without reference to the matter of current market price. But looking at the situation through the eyes of the lawyer, who may not be a specialist in condemnation cases and thus may regard State v. Carpenter as a decision like any other, one should perhaps be surprised only if the procedure followed in this case had not been followed. As the court properly concedes, Taylor County v. Olds stands for the proposition that evidence as to a value other than value in the sense of current market price is not even admissible, unless it is first established that the current price kind of value does not exist. State v. Carpenter came after Taylor County v. Olds but did not refer to it. State v. Carpenter was succeeded by the decision of the Galveston Court of Civil Appeals in Foley Bros. Dry Goods Co. v. Settegast, which — with the point properly before it— quoted Taylor County v. Olds at some length and with approval. When we “refused” the application for writ of error in the Foley Bros, case, we in effect made the language and quoted language in the opinion our own. That language used the term “market value” as meaning actual current market price, just as the lower courts did here, used “intrinsic value” as meaning value other than actual current market price, just as the lower courts did here, and indicated that “market value” in the sense of actual current market price must be eliminated before the other kind of value may be used, just as the courts below sought to do here. And, as we properly acknowledge, counsel for the condemnor city during the trial of the instant case appeared to maintain the view of Taylor County v. Olds and Foley Bros. Dry Goods Co. v. Settegast by objecting to the testimony of valuation experts of the condemnee on the ground that they were not familiar with current market prices of land in the area in question. One might add that our somewhat categorical statement that “market value is not restricted to prevailing price,” is less a self evident proposition than a concept originating with State v. Carpenter. Surely in ordinary parlance “market value” has something to do with a market, and “market” suggests a substantial number of actual sales; whereas the willing buyer — willing seller price value of State v. Carpenter is by its own language a hypothetical one— an imaginary price to be paid by an imaginary buyer to an imaginary seller in an imaginary sale. Now the point of all this is not that State v. Carpenter is wrong. Whether the label, “market value,” which it affixes to the hypothetical willing buyer-willing seller price value is scientifically accurate, or less accurate than the label “intrinsic value” used in the instant case for the same idea, is of little consequence so long as we know what we mean by the label we actually use. Doubtless, too, it is *338simpler and more practical to have only the one issue of willing buyer-willing seller price value, rather than an issue on actual prevailing price and, conditioned on the answer thereto, the further issue on willing buyer-willing seller price value. It is well, indeed, to state this much in our opinion for future guidance of the bar and judges generally. But in deciding the instant case, the above-described conflicting state of the law certainly invites us to view with indulgence the course followed below and even more than in the ordinary case to be willing to subordinate mere form and terminology to substance and meaning. In my opinion we should hold the errors in the charge to be on their face innocent of prejudicial consequences and thus no ground for reversal. See Texas Employers Ins. Assn. v. McKay, 146 Texas 569, 571, 210 S.W. 2d 147, 148.
Under the Carpenter case, the matter for the jury to determine is, as stated, the price to prevail between consenting but uncompelled buyer and seller. In the instant case the conclusion seems inescapable that Special Issue No. 2, with its important accompanying instruction, plainly presented this very question. The label, “intrinsic value,” used in the interrogation sentence, being clearly defined in the instruction in the terms of the Carpenter case formula, surely we are not to assume that the jurors would ignore the vital definition and look only to the term defined in concluding what was meant. If the trial court had used merely the single label “value” in the interrogation (instead of “intrinsic value”) along with the definition actually given, doubtless the innocuousness of the error would be more apparent, but it is hardly to be believed that the additional word “intrinsic” would somehow blind the jury to the definition or render the latter difficult to understand or accept. The fact that the alternative method of submitting the two different ideas of value operated to bring an additional, and, under the Carpenter case erroneous, theory of value (actual market price) into the minds of the jurors, would not cause them to give a mistaken answer to the alternative issue clearly submitting the correct theory. The worst it might have done, would have been to cause them to find that an actual market price for the 4.57 acres existed and thus to leave unanswered the alternative issue (No. 2) on willing buyer and seller value. This, of course, did not occur. The latter issue was duly answered. The charge is not attacked as excluding from consideration in connection with Special Issue No. 2 such relevant evidence as there was about actual sales of land, nor do we find anything in the charge to this effect. The submission of Special Issue No. 1 itself, enquiring as to (in effect) the actual market price of the 4.57 acres, would not seem by inference to ex-*339elude consideration of any relevant cases of actual sales of other property in determining (under Special Issue No. 2) what a willing buyer and seller price would be for the 4.57 acres. In brief, the effect of the charge, so far as concerns the above discussed issues, was a submission substantially in accord with State v. Carpenter.
Now all the foregoing seems conceded to be true, and yet we say that the formal error of merely labeling the willing buyer-willing seller test as “intrinsic value” and labeling current price as “market value” somehow probably did cause a relatively excessive verdict, because the definition of “intrinsic value” used the words “the price * * * the land should sell for” instead of “the price * * * the land would sell for” (the latter being the phrase used in the Carpenter case). I take it that if the definition had but said “would” instead of “should,” the errors in question would be admittedly unsubstantial. In the first place, it appears somewhat strange thus to infer an excessive verdict, when the condemnor itself has not claimed the verdict to be excessive on the evidence, when we have sustained no assignment based on admission of evidence of the “speculative elements of damages,” which the court apprehends to have been considered, and when no objection to the charge was grounded on this supposedly important difference between “should” and “would.” Secondly, while the court does not say just what this difference is, even in “ordinary signification,” much less as a matter of “distinction by lexicographers * * * and grammarians,” I take the argument to be that “should” is so much more indefinite than “would” as probably to cause a larger verdict than would (or should) have been caused by “would.” With all deference, I submit that such reasoning, as applied to a jury of other than professors of English, is somewhat fanciful. It isn’t even sound as a matter of abstract thinking. Obviously any willing buyer-willing seller test is hypothetical, because the “sale” in question has not been made and never will be. The jury simply says what it thinks the price would be, if such a sale should occur at the time the verdict is rendered. When thus undoubtedly dealing with a mere opinion of the jury about an imaginary price, how can there be any substantial difference between what the price “would,” or even “will,” be and, on the other hand, what it “should,” or “ought to,” be? If we say that “should” invites the jury to indulge the possible prejudice that condemnors ought to be more generous than businesslike, we yet have in the definition itself the opposing element that the hypothetical price must be one agreeable to an uncompelled buyer. How can we say that the mere word “should” caused the jury to regard the uncompelled buyer in the definí*340tion as a person motivated by liberality rather than his own business interest? The very concept of an uncompelled buyer is to the contrary.
An additional point of the court is likewise without substance. Special Issue No. 1 (as to the existence of an actual market price) applied by its terms only to the 4.57-acre tract. It is said that a corresponding issue should have been submitted in connection with the valuation of the rest of the land of the respondent before and after the taking of the 4.57 acres (Special Issues Nos. 3-7). The effect of the omission was to deprive the jury of the chance to establish the existence and amount of an actual market price of the remaining land at the times specified, because Special Issues Nos. 6 and 7 (actual market price of the remaining land) were conditional upon No. 1, which would determine the existence vel non of an actual market price only as to the 4.57 acres. The answer to this point is that Special Issue No. 1 was erroneous and unnecessary in the first place, and an identical additional issue would have been likewise, because the correct enquiry under the Carpenter case was, not actual price in an actual market, but the hypothetical “willing buyer and seller” price. The Carpenter case does not for every conceivable case exclude the possibility of an actual market price of land in terms like market quotations of wheat or cotton, but such a price obviously would be an unusual thing, and there cannot be said to be evidence of its existence in this case. Indeed, it is the very position of the petitioner City that it was error to submit the “wheat, cotton, and other commodities” type of market value, and if it was error to submit it as regards the 4.57 acres taken, it would have been equally error to submit it as regards the “before and after” valuation of the remainder of the condemnees’ property.
It should perhaps be added that the foregoing views as to the innocuous character of the errors in connection with Special Issue No. 2 (valuation of the 4.57 acres taken) apply also in connection with Special Issues Nos. 3 and 4 (“before and after” valuation of the rest of condemnees’ property). The use of the wrong term “intrinsic” in the actual questions was patently harmless in view of the definition just preceding the question in No. 2, which definition by its terms applied also to Nos. 3 and 4; and the mere fact that the jury was given a chance — which it did not accept — to find a wrong type of valuation is not more ground for reversal as regards Special Issues Nos. 3 and 4 than it is as regards Special Issue No. 2.
Opinion delevired March 31, 1954.
Rehearing overruled June 2, 1954.