Court Opinion

ID: 9656506
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:49:44.723488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:32.841435
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
The instruction; “I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, that in assessing compensation in this case, no consideration can be given to any inconvenience to the landowner because of the construction of the improvement” ; seems to me to be an incorrect statement of the law and I would reverse for giving that charge to the jury.
This court has said:
“In Blount County v. Campbell, 268 Ala. 548, 109 So.2d 678, 682, the new controlled access highway went through his property where no highway had ever been. His access rights to this new highway were condemned. His property did not abut on the old highway but one of the roads to the old highway was sealed off. We held that the taking of the land, the closing of one of the roads to the old highway, his loss of access to his remaining property, and the ‘inconvenience to the remaining tract resulting from the condemnation’ were circumstances to be considered by the jury.” (Emphasis Supplied.) St. Clair County v. Bukacek, 272 Ala. 323, 327, 131 So.2d 683, 687.
If this court was correct in saying that the “inconvenience to the remaining tract” is “to be considered by the jury,” I find it difficult to understand how the charge in the instant case is not incorrect in saying “no consideration can be given to any in-: convenience to the landowner.”
This court says inconvenience is to be considered and the charge says no consid-5| *682eration is to be given to any inconvenience. One statement or the other is incorrect because they are contradictory, unless the phrase “inconvenience to the remaining tract” means something different from the phrase “inconvenience to the landowner.”
I am unable to follow the argument that the phrase, “inconvenience to the landowner,” means something personal to him, unconnected with the value of the land, and, therefore, that the charge in the instant case is merely misleading and not an incorrect statement of the law. The only sort of inconvenience that can have any effect on the value of land is inconvenience to the owner, and I do not think a jury would understand the charge any other way.
The argument to the contrary seems to •me to be unsound and, for that reason, I ■dissent.