Court Opinion

ID: 9847655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:04:13.361405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:25.522326
License: Public Domain

Banke, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
By specifically excepting from the taking “that portion of the air space over the above described property necessary to maintain the *503existing guy wire system which traverses said right-of-way . . . ,” the department has, of course, evinced a determination to construct and maintain the proposed highway in a manner which does not physically interfere with the continued maintenance and operation of the appellant’s transmission tower, an option evidently seen as less costly than compensating the appellant for the relocation of the tower. The department acknowledges that, as a result of this decision, motorists using the proposed highway may be exposed to danger from falling ice and further acknowledges that, despite having studied this problem since 1960, it has yet to decide how to deal with it. It is, therefore, with some degree of arrogance that the department invokes the principle that mere negligence and bad judgment in the design of a public improvement will not authorize judicial interference with the exercise of the right of eminent domain. See City of Atlanta v. First Nat. Bank of Atlanta, 246 Ga. 424, 424-425 (271 SE2d 821) (1980).
Decided March 20, 1986
Rehearing denied April 2, 1986
J. Kirk Quillian, Donald W. Janney, for appellant.
John R. Strother, Jr., Beryl H. Weiner, James S. S. Howell, for *504appellee.
*503The dilemma facing the appellant results from the fact that if a motorist using the proposed roadway is eventually injured by a shard of ice falling from the tower, the state will be immune from any resulting tort liability, leaving the appellant holding the bag. At the hearing on the motion to set the declaration of taking aside, counsel for the department candidly admitted that the appellant might ultimately be forced to relocate the tower at its own expense to avoid such liability, stating: “If they have to buy an insurance policy, then I guess that would be part of the compensation, whatever the premium value of the future projections of buying the insurance policy would be. I don’t know. . . . They may have to decide they can’t stay there; they can’t get an insurance policy; to move if the situation is that bad.” Of course, if the appellant were forced to relocate the tower at its own expense, then the department would have succeeded in transferring to it a substantial portion of the economic cost of the project. I concur in the judgment of affirmance only because I believe Division 5 of the majority’s opinion adequately protects the appellant from such a result, by making it clear that any future loss suffered by the appellant as a result of “the effect of the project” may be recovered in a future action or actions for damages based on inverse condemnation.
I am authorized to state that Judge Pope and Judge Beasley join in this special concurrence.