Court Opinion

ID: 9714890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:48:07.519735+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:29.292463
License: Public Domain

Wilkie, J.
(dissenting). Art. I, sec. 13 of the Wisconsin Constitution provides simply:
“The property of no person shall be taken for public use without just compensation therefor.”
As this provision clearly contemplates, before just compensation is required, there must be a taking of a person’s property. The majority conclude that the rental loss sustained by the appellants due to the pending acquisition of their property by the Expressway Commission constituted a taking. I respectfully disagree.
*285This rental loss, while it may be a significant sum, is, in my opinion, merely consequential or incidental damage to the property of the appellants. As the majority opinion indicates, this court has previously adhered to the proposition that mere consequential damage to property resulting from governmental action is not a taking.1 In order for there to be compensation for consequential damages, some statute must so provide.
Here, sec. 32.19 (4), Stats., provides for rental loss compensation limited to the year preceding the taking of the property. The majority now hold this limitation to be unconstitutional. In effect, the majority find that the taking for which compensation is required occurred at the time the appellants’ tenant learned of the planned acquisition by the commission and refused to renew its lease. Under the guise of declaring the statute unconstitutional, the majority are actually enlarging, its coverage.
The majority, by equating loss of rent with a taking, are construing the constitutional provision as if it read: The property of no person shall be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation therefor. This is an unfortunate, and in my opinion an impermissible judicial amendment to the constitution.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Chief Justice Hallows and Mr. Justice Robert W. Hansen join in this dissent.

 Wisconsin Power & Light Co. v. Columbia, County (1958), 3 Wis. 2d 1, 87 N. W. 2d 279.