Court Opinion

ID: 9587857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:27:10.565646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:56.170959
License: Public Domain

Brailsford, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. Well qualified expert witnesses, testified, in general, that it is highly desirable for a manufacturing plant such as that owned by appellant to have a suitable site for a facility for pretreatment of industrial waste, even where disposal is being made in public sewers without pretreatment, as insurance against a change in policy by the sewer commission requiring pretreatment. They testified specifically that the loss of the property taken, which was suitable for this purpose, resulted in a substantial depreciation in the present market value of appellant’s plant. The parties are in agreement as to the market value of the property taken, and no attempt is being made to bolster that value on the speculation that it will be utilized as the site of a pretreatment facility. Instead, the testimony dealt with the impact which the loss of the site had on the present market value of the remaining property. Since the Greater Greenville Sewer District has the right to require pretreatment whenever in its judgment such should become necessary, it seems entirely logical to me that a prospective purchaser would be vitally interested in the means at hand to meet such a demand if it should be made. This is the tenor of the testimony. Pprhaps the demand will never be made, but the contingency and the impairment of the means at hand to meet it result, logically and according to the expert testimony, in depreciation in market value. This is present, *524instead of remote, and no more speculative than any opinion testimony as to depreciation in the market value of real estate.
I would reverse the judgment appealed from.
Bussey, J., concurs.