Court Opinion

ID: 9629758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:48:29.436242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:23.275573
License: Public Domain

BOOCHEVER, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
The fact of the earlier appraisal made by witness Arnold was in evidence. The court prohibited introduction of the values given by Arnold on the earlier appraisal. I agree that this was error, but I believe that it was harmless error.
Counsel made no effort to pursue the matter after the initial objection was ruled on. He could have sought to introduce evidence that Arnold initially attempted to evaluate the property on the basis of two separate parcels. Arnold in his voir dire gave the reasons why he thought this was an improper method of evaluation. He contended that it was unrealistic to treat the two parcels as separately owned since one parcel might be entitled to substantial severance damages because of loss of access when, in reality, access was available through the other parcel. Arnold had been instructed to consider the two parcels as separately owned for purposes of his earlier appraisal, but at the time of that appraisal, he objected to that assumption.1
Arnold’s reasons present valid considerations which are not in conflict with the earlier Babinec opinion. See Babinec v. State, 512 P.2d 563 (Alaska 1973). In the earlier opinion, we said that the court had erred in failing to allow the property owners’ witnesses to testify as to value based on a breakdown of the property as separate parcels. This was not meant to include a right to severance damages for one parcel when no such damages would exist when the other parcel was considered.2 The reason for allowing the testimony as to the two parcels was because one portion of the property had been subdivided and had a substantially higher value than the other portion of the property. We stated:
Since the proportion of the property taken in the subdivided section to the total property taken was much higher than the proportion of the entire subdivided acreage to the total acreage, an evaluation based on average acreage value for the entire property taken results in a substantially lower sum than if the parcels are evaluated separately.
512 P.2d at 568 (emphasis added). Arnold’s reason for not assuming separate ownership of the two parcels was the severance damage problem, a justifiable reason.
If the court had permitted the evidence as to the values of the initial appraisal by Arnold, I believe that his explanation as to why he did not approve of the method used would substantially have weakened any effect on the jury.
Moreover, it seems significant to me that the jury did not follow Arnold’s evaluation. *970The jury seemed to rely on the state witness Hoefer’s evaluation because it returned a verdict in almost the exact amount of his evaluation. It is difficult for me to see how the additional testimony of Arnold could have affected the jury’s evaluation.
There have now been two lengthy trials of this case. A party is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.3 I would affirm the judgment of the superior court.

. Mr. Arnold testified on voir dire:
I was told to ignore the ownership of Mr. Babinec as it lay east of the Chapman Parcel. . I could not visualize or utilize what was actual fact. . . . They imposed upon me by this instruction the totally spurious situation that did not conform to fact

. In fact, we explicitly observed:
The arguments presented were somewhat confusing in failing to distinguish between parcelization problems involving severance damages and issues pertaining to units of valuation not necessarily related to severance damages.
Babinec v. State, 512 P.2d at 567.

. Sidney v. State, 468 P.2d 960, 963 (Alaska 1970), quoting Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123, 135, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 1627, 20 L.Ed.2d 476, 484-85 (1968).