Court Opinion

ID: 9443225
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:14:41.609183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:24.812131
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge.
I concur and would only add that I am not sure that we are concerned here simply with questions of local Puerto Rican law, as to which we may not upset a judgment of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico unless it is “inescapably wrong”. De Castro v. Board of Commissioners, 1944, 322 U.S. 451, 64 S.Ct. 1121, 88 L.Ed, 1384. It is true, questions of the rules of evidence to be applied in the insular courts would ordinarily be of that category. But the Bill of Rights in the Organic Act contains the prohibition, 48 U.S.C.A. § 737: “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use except upon payment of just compensation ascertained in the manner provided by law.” It would seem that a federal question is presented, as to which this court is entitled to take its independent view, when the relevance, and hence admissibility, of evidence is determined by the factors which a condemnee is entitled to establish as bearing on the amount of “just compensation” guaranteed to him by the Organic Act.
Judge WOODBURY concurs also in this opinion.