Brown v. N.J. Short Line R. Co.

• Decision Date: 16 November 1908
• Citation: 71 A. 271,76 N.J.L. 795
• Parties: BROWN et al. v. NEW JERSEY SHORT LINE R. CO. (two cases).
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

71 A. 271

76 N.J.L. 795

BROWN et al.

v. NEW JERSEY SHORT LINE R. CO. (two cases).

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Nov. 16, 1908.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to Circuit Court, Middlesex County.

Separate condemnation proceedings by the New Jersey Short Line Railroad Company against David A. Brown and others, and against Euphemia Brown and others. On appeal by the landowners to the circuit court from the awards of the commissioners, judgments were entered in their favor, and the railroad company brings error. Affirmed.

Linton Satterthwait, for plaintiff in error.

Ephraim Cutter, for defendants in error.

VREDENBURGH, J. These two causes, tried below together, and argued by briefs before us, present the same questions for decision, and require but one opinion. The principal errors alleged by the railroad company, the plaintiff in error, relate to the conduct of the trial in the admission of certain opinion evidence of witnesses, offered by the appealing landowners, to prove the market value of the strip of land sought to be condemned for the uses of the company. In the exercise of the discretion vested in the trial judge be allowed certain witnesses to express before the jury, after preliminary examination of their fitness therein, their expert opinions of the value of this land. The undoubted rule of law regulating this judicial discretion is that, while it is very broad, it is not unlimited—to adopt the language of the courts of review in the cases cited below—unless this action of the trial court in deciding this preliminary question is "clearly shown to be erroneous in matter of law," or, more precisely speaking, if there is "any legal evidence" to support such determination, it will not be deemed sufficient ground for reversal. State v. Arthur, 70 N. J. Law, 426, 57 Atl. 156; Riley v. Camden and Trenton Ry. Co., 70 N. J. Law, 289, 57 Atl. 445; Stephen's Dig. of L. of Ev. (1904) 277; New Jersey Zinc Co. v. Lehigh Zinc Co., 59 N. J. Law, 189, 35 Atl. 915.

In deciding this narrow question it will answer, I think, all present necessities to consider the voluminous testimony of these witnesses in bulk, and not in detail, and only so far as it bears upon their special experience and knowledge, acquired through previous sales and purchases of other similar lands in the vicinity of the land in question. Whether such other lands were sufficiently like the land taken, and such sales were sufficiently near in point of time and vicinage to qualify opinion evidence as to value, was, under the authorities, also very largely within the range of the discretion of the trial court These hold that a wide discretion should be given the trial judge in determining whether the conditions are such as readily to admit of reasonable comparison between the land taken and the lands so sold. Laing v. United N. J. R. & C. Co., 54 N. J. Law, 576, 25 Atl. 409, 33 Am. St. Rep. 682; Shattuck v. Stoneham Branch Railroad, 6 Allen (Mass.) 115. Evidently, in view of these authorities, the most material circumstance forming this qualification of expert witnesses as to land values consists of the fact, either that they have themselves made sales or purchases of other similar lands in the neighborhood of the land in question within recent periods, or that they had knowledge of such sales by others. How recent the occurrence of such sales, in point of time, and how near in location, and how nearly similar in comparison must, of course, vary with the circumstances of each case, and it is therefore impossible to define a general rule applicable to all cases. Yet, there are cases which afford some definite guide as to such time, distance, and similarity. For instance, in Benham v. Dunbar, reported in 103 Mass. 365, upon a petition, under a statute, for a jury to assess the value of a lot of land to be taken for public uses on an island in Boston Harbor, it was held, upon error, by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, that the admission of evidence of the...