Court Opinion

ID: 6913216
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 22:31:37.095148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:06:34.653616
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur entirely in the opinion on the landowner’s appeal; and since the matter is not of permanent significance, I have finally determined to concur in the result on the commissioners’ appeal. I agree that the amounts awarded the commissioners by the district judge were quite low for professional services and that we ought not to penalize the commissioners because their erroneous conception of governing principles robbed their work of much of its effectiveness— though it is difficult to see why they persisted after the very direct admonition implicit in the judge’s return of the matter to them for more adequate findings. But having in mind the range of discretion vested in the judge and the amounts payable in comparable cases in New York and in the T. V. A. condemnations, I think a doubling of the awards made below would have been quite generous. I fear that so substantial a cost of proceedings so considerably abortive will prejudice the future use of the often *417convenient state practice of valuation by commissioners in governmental taking of private property. For under F.R. 71A (h) either party may claim trial by jury, and the judge has only a very limited power (which he will naturally be hesitant to exercise) to override such claim.