Connecticut Printers, Inc. v. Redevelopment Agency of City of Hartford

• Decision Date: 19 May 1970
• Citation: 159 Conn. 407,270 A.2d 549
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: CONNECTICUT PRINTERS, INC. v. REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY OF the CITY OF HARTFORD.

Page 549

270 A.2d 549

159 Conn. 407

CONNECTICUT PRINTERS, INC. v. REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY OF the CITY OF HARTFORD.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

May 19, 1970.

Russell L. Post, Jr., Hartford, for appellant (plaintiff).

Thomas P. Heslin, Hartford, for appellee (defendant).

Before ALCORN, COTTER, THIM, RYAN and SHAPIRO, ^* JJ.

COTTER, Associate Justice.

The defendant, in eminent domain proceedings, took the plaintiff's land, together with the buildings and improvements thereon, known as 89 Trumbull Street, as part of a redevelopment project in Hartford and assessed damages at $385,000. The defendant filed a statement of compensation and deposited that sum of money with the clerk of the Superior Court. Thereafter, the plaintiff applied to the Superior Court for a review of the assessment and the court referred the matter to a state referee, who, acting as the court, heard evidence and found the property to have a fair market value of $465,000. The plaintiff has appealed to this court from the judgment rendered in its favor.

The finding sets forth the following unchallenged facts. The structure on the land in question consisted of five stories and a basement and had a small elevator. There was no parking space connected with the property on the taking date. There was a difficult driveway on a downgrade, one-way street, and a trailer truck had to come down and back up a grade to get in. The building was in excellent repair at the time of the taking, although it was constructed in 1926. It had an unusually great load-bearing capacity and had been used for printing, binding and engraving operations. Before the date of the taking, December 28, 1967, the plaintiff had purchased land in 1952 and 1962 in Bloomfield, outside of Hartford, and by December of 1965 it had ceased completely its operations in the building except for paper storage and bindery purposes. No local printery and bookbinding operation would occupy as much space as was contained in the building. Operations for printing and binding under conditions existing on the taking date are most efficiently conducted in one-story buildings, such as the plaintiff's present plant, located in Bloomfield, where there are no elevators and operations are horizontal.

The plaintiff makes no claim that redevelopment caused the move of its business from Trumbull Street to the Bloomfield plant.

Although its assignment of errors was quite extensive, the plaintiff has not briefed or argued the claims relating to the refusal to find certain alleged facts, or to the admission of certain evidence. We therefore treat these assignments of error as abandoned. Sherman-Colonial Realty Corporation v. Goldsmith, 155 Conn. 175, 183, 230 A.2d 568. The plaintiff vigorously presses the assignments of error addressed to the referee's finding that, because no printing or book concern would lease a structure of this type at this location, despite its unusual strength, the highest and best use of the subject property on the date of the taking was as a commercial building to be rented to multiple tenants for uses such as manufacturing and storage.

Article first, § 11, of the Connecticut constitution and the fifth amendment to the United States constitution, as applied through the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment, provide for the payment of just compensation to one whose property is taken for a public use. Just compensation has been defined as a fair equivalent in money for the property taken as nearly as its nature will permit. E. & F. Construction Co. v. Ives, 156 Conn. 416, 420, 242 A.2d 768; Ives v. Addison, 155 Conn. 335, 341, 232 A.2d 311. The usual measure of compensation is fair market value, or the price that would probably result from fair negotiations between a willing seller and a willing buyer. Eljay Realty Co. v. Argraves, 149 Conn. 203, 205, 206, 177 A.2d 677; 29A C.J.S. Eminent Domain § 136(2); 27 Am.Jur.2d, Eminent Domain, § 267. In order to fix this fair equivalent in money, or value, or fair market value, it was the referee's duty to consider all the factors, circumstances and opinions expressed by the witnesses before him that would tend to affect the worth of the property taken; to take into account the use to which the property has been devoted and which in fact enhanced its value; and ultimately to make his own determination of just compensation. Moss v. New Haven Redevelopment Agency, 146 Conn. 421, 425, 151 A.2d 693; see Brothers, Inc. v. Ansonia Redevelopment Agency, 158 Conn. 37, 43, 255 A.2d 836. One factor was the so-called highest and best use of the property or its most advantageous use. Housing Authority, etc. v. Lustig, 139 Conn. 73, 76, 90 A.2d 169. Value will be affected by the uses that can be made of the premises, and a willing seller may reasonably be expected to sell to that prospective buyer who would use the property most advantageously and would therefore be willing to pay more than others. In a different context we stated, in State National Bank of Connecticut v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 156 Conn. 99, 101, 239 A.2d 528, 530: 'The 'highest and best use' concept, chiefly employed as a starting point in estimating the value of real estate by appraisers, has to do with the use which will most likely produce the highest market value, greatest financial return, or the most profit from the use of a particular piece of real estate.'

It is the plaintiff's contention that, even though no ready market existed for its unusually strong structure as a printing plant, the highest and best use of the building was nevertheless a printing plant. But if no market existed, such a use would not produce the highest market value or the most profits, because the premises would be vacant. In Milford Water Co. v. Kannia, 92 Conn. 31, 34, 101 A. 475, a landowner offered evidence as to the adaptability of his premises for use in a waterbottling business on the ground that the value of the land for that use should be taken into account. This court held that just compensation to which an owner is entitled in eminent domain is the value of the land taken considered with reference to the uses for which the land is then adapted, and it excluded, as too remote and speculative, evidence as to the alleged adaptability of the land for a special commercial business, in the absence of a showing on the record that there was an available market for the product at the time of the taking.

In the present case, the referee found that there was no existing market for the building as a printing plant and that its marketability on the date of the taking was not enhanced by its special qualities.

In order for the value of the plaintiff's premises to be increased by the unusual load-bearing capacity, there must have been a showing not only that the premises were physically or specially adaptable for the particular use upon which the plaintiff solely relied, i.e. a printery, but also that there was a reasonable probability that they would be so used within a reasonable time; otherwise the special use would be too remote and speculative to have any legitimate effect upon the valuation. See United States ex rel. Tennessee Valley Authority v. Powelson, 319...