Court Opinion

ID: 9451082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:06:14.921587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:34.070974
License: Public Domain

DANAHER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
My colleagues conclude that the District Court erred in its exclusion of a December 10, 1962 report of the Zoning Advisory Council, the text of which they have quoted. The proffer rested upon the ground that the report contained a statement of policy by the Zoning Commission. Apparently the Zoning Commission had never acted on the report submitted by the Council. There was no showing that any of the property owners in the affected area had ever applied for a change in zoning. There was no evidence that the Zoning Commission had adopted or even contemplated a change in policy. The District’s appraisers had submitted their opinions as to the highest and best use of the land without regard to any possibility, either reasonably or remote, that in the future some higher value might be attributed to the property because of a zoning change. Thus the “report” was not rebuttal.
The Supreme Court has told us that “The highest and most profitable use for which the property is adaptable and needed or likely to be needed in the reasonably near future is to be considered, not necessarily as the measure of value, but to the full extent that the prospect of demand for such use affects the market value while the property is privately held.”1
Here, quite in accord with the rule the jury was instructed that it was not limited in considering value to the use to which the property was being put. On the contrary,
“[Y]ou [the jurors] have a right to consider the most advantageous and the most valuable use of which that property was or is capable. For example, if the whole or any part of the property is peculiarly adopted [sic] by its zoning, its location, its surroundings or its natural advantages, or by its intrinsic character or some other circumstance to some particular use which gives it a higher market value than it would otherwise have, that circumstance may be considered in determining the fair market value.”
The trial judge continued:
“By the most valuable use or uses to which the property can be or may be put is meant either some existing use or one which the evidence shows is so reasonably likely in the near future that the availability of the property for that use would affect its fair market price, and would be taken into account by a purchaser under fair market conditions.” (Emphasis supplied.)
In the Olson case, a unanimous Court added:
“The determination is to be made in the light of all facts affecting the market value that are shown by the evidence taken in connection with those of such general notoriety as not to require proof. Elements affecting value that depend upon events or combinations of occurrences *745which, while within the realm of possibility, are not fairly shown to be reasonably probable, should be excluded from consideration for that would be to allow mere speculation and conjecture to become a guide for the ascertainment of value — a thing to be condemned in business transactions as well as in judicial ascertainment of truth.” (Emphasis supplied.) 2
The trial judge excluded the proffered report and in my view, his ruling was quite within the guidelines thus spelled out. He could readily discern the absence of foundation for its admissibility. He could see the infirmities noted by my colleagues — -as they were bound to do on this record:
“It is true that this report related to different property than that here at issue; that the Advisory Council is not the ultimate policy-making body; that the staff of the Zoning Commission may not have been correctly quoted. * *
The majority opinion at that point should have gone on to say that the reference to the views of the staff and its “assumption” as to Commission policy at best was only hearsay.3 See the report itself, supra, as set out by my colleagues, in particular part:
“All Commission members were reminded by the staff that expansion of the R-5-D district [zoned for high rise apartment houses] is essential. This, is a conclusion based on the assumption that Commission policy endorsing high rise apartment development peripheral to the Central Business District is sound and that the rate of construction reached during 1960-61 ought to be maintained.”
There was no showing on this record that the Council’s “report” had even been announced prior to the time of the second H. & R. Corporation taking on January 16, 1963,4 yet my colleagues indulge in another “assumption” in ruling with reference to it.
I fail to understand how any such “report,” subject to the various infirmities I have mentioned, can be deemed to constitute relevant evidence to establish a substantial possibility, much less a “reasonable probability,” that rezoning would be based upon it and that higher valuations might thereupon follow.5
I believe that the ruling of the trial judge was not erroneous and that his charge, taken as a whole, was adapted to the issues and fairly instructed the jury as to the proper basis for ascertainment of its awards. I would affirm the judgments.

. Olson v. United States, 292 U.S. 246, 255, 54 S.Ct. 704, 708, 78 L.Ed. 1236 (1934).

. Id. at 257, 54 S.Ct. at 709.

. My colleagues say that such statements “were inadmissible.”

. My colleagues concede that as to “two of the appellants the report was properly excluded” because the takings had occurred before the date of the Council’s report, December 10, 1962.

. Even at a risk approaching sheer speculation, the trial judge had allowed the appellants’ experts to testify that one of the factors they used in reaching fair market value was the expectation of a change in zoning. The judge, therefore, went as far as he properly could, in my view, when he instructed the jury thus:
“You are to determine fair market value as though this proceeding had never been brought, as though there was a voluntary sale between a willing seller and a willing buyer, the seller not being compelled to sell and the buyer not being compelled to buy, and I repeat, on the assumption that both the potential buyer and seller were knowledgeable of all of the elements of value involved in the transaction.”