Greene v. Dist. of Columbia
| Citation | 56 A.3d 1170 |
| Decision Date | 06 December 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 11–CV–1626.,11–CV–1626. |
| Parties | Mary Rose GREENE, et al., Appellants v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Appellee. |
| Court | D.C. Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Ralph Werner, Washington, for appellants.
Carl J. Schifferle, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Irvin B. Nathan, Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Todd S. Kim, Solicitor General, Donna M. Murasky, Deputy Solicitor General, William D. Burk, Chief, Land Acquisition & Bankruptcy Section, and Edward P. Henneberry, Assistant Attorney General, were on the brief, for appellee.
Before OBERLY, BECKWITH, and EASTERLY, Associate Judges.
With this case we return to the District of Columbia's revitalization project for the Skyland Shopping Center area in Ward 7.1 Appellant, Mary Rose Greene, owned property near the shopping center. After a portion of her property was condemned, a jury trial was held to determine her compensation for the taking. The jury awarded Ms. Greene almost two million dollars. Ms. Greene now appeals.
Setting aside her challenge to the trial court's subject matter jurisdiction, which we reject,2 Ms. Greene's central claim is that she was inadequately compensated for two reasons: (1) the trial court did not permit her to present evidence of severance damages— i.e., evidence that the taking reduced the value of her untaken land—and (2) the trial court improperly restricted her expert appraiser's testimony. We find no merit to these arguments.3 Where Ms. Greene had no claim for severance damages as a matter of law, the trial court properly acted as gatekeeper and precluded Ms. Greene from presenting evidence to the jury on this theory. Likewise, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it limited Ms. Greene's expert appraiser's testimony regarding his foundation for his valuation of the taken land. We affirm.
As the proceedings in this case spanned years, we summarize only the facts necessary to put our legal analysis in context.
From the mid–1960s to the mid–1990s, Ms. Greene acquired a number of contiguous plots amounting to approximately eight and a half acres of land, forming a crescent shape, in the Southeast quadrant of the District of Columbia.4 The land at the bottom of the crescent was about a block away from Skyland Shopping Center. Although Ms. Greene maintained that she always intended to develop this land, and although she made some improvements to the property during the decades in which she owned it ( e.g., filling and regrading portions of the land), for the duration of her ownership, the land remained wooded, undeveloped, and unused.
Ms. Greene became aware in the early 1990's that the District was interested in revitalizing the Skyland area. In 2004, the District targeted Ms. Greene's land for development in conjunction with a plan to renovate the Skyland Shopping Center. In February 2005, the District offered to purchase approximately seven of Ms. Greene's eight and a half acres of land—the middle and bottom of the crescent-shaped parcel—for $943,000. Ms. Greene declined to sell at that price.
Instead, in June 2005, Ms. Greene asked an architect, Jane Nelson, to create a development plan that would demonstrate her land's market value.5 Nelson Architects, in coordination with engineers and cost estimators, created a series of plans that attempted to maximize the density of development under existing zoning regulations while accommodating the “severe” topography of the site, which had dramatic changes in elevation. The final plan, which Ms. Greene and Ms. Nelson determined represented the highest and best use of the property, called for the construction of a 400–unit condominium complex in the middle of the crescent-shaped property and a total of twenty-four single-family houses, eleven at the top of the crescent and the remaining thirteen at the bottom of the crescent. The land at the top of the crescent-shaped parcel also gave the condominium complex access to public streets.
Well before this final plan was completed, the District filed suit in July 2005, to take Ms. Greene's property and determine just compensation under D.C.Code § 16–1311 (2001). The District and Ms. Greene each engaged an appraiser who filed expert reports opining as to the fair market value of the taken property. Both experts agreed that the best method of valuation under the circumstances was to look at sales of comparable properties in the area, contemporaneous to the taking. Nonetheless, in the almost six years it took to take this case to trial, the nature and scope of the expert testimony was vigorously litigated in multiple motions in limine. The disputes concerned (1) the availability of severance damages to the untaken land; (2) whether the sales that the experts relied upon in appraising the taken property were sufficiently comparable; and (3) the admissibility of other valuation methods for the taken land. The trial court 6 issued a series of rulings that precluded evidence of severance damages and ultimately limitedMs. Greene's expert's testimony about the basis of his appraisal to four completed comparable sales in the District.
The case finally went to trial in May 2011. At trial, the District's expert appraiser, David Lennhoff, opined that the value of Ms. Greene's taken land amounted to $1,850,000; Ms. Greene's expert appraiser, Dennis Duffy, asserted that the value was $9,561,000. The jury adopted the value offered by Mr. Lennhoff, and the trial judge entered a judgment in the amount of the jury's verdict. This appeal followed.
Ms. Greene challenges the adequacy of her compensation in this case on two grounds. First, she asserts that she was improperly precluded from presenting evidence to the jury about severance damages. Whether and under what circumstances a trial court has the power to bar a land owner's presentation of evidence about severance damages are questions of law that we review de novo. Anderson v. Abidoye, 824 A.2d 42, 44 (D.C.2003). Second, Ms. Greene asserts that her expert appraiser's testimony about the basis for his valuation of the taken property was improperly constricted by the trial court because her appraiser was precluded from testifying about other land sales comparable to the taken land and about valuation methods for the taken land other than comparable sales. We review the trial court's rulings about the scope of an expert's testimony for abuse of discretion. See Duk Hea Oh, 7 A.3d at 1009–11 & n. 21.
We hold that the trial court had a proper gatekeeping role to play vis-à-vis Ms. Greene's claim for severance damages. We further hold that, applying the correct legal standard—whether there was reasonably foreseeable “unity of use” between Ms. Greene's untaken one-and-half-acre parcel of land and her taken seven-acre parcel of land—Ms. Greene did not have a claim for severance damages. Our analysis is driven by the facts specific to her claim; we turn to those facts now.
Prior to trial, Mr. Duffy, Ms. Greene's expert appraiser, prepared a report in which he concluded that the District should give Ms. Greene almost ten million dollars as compensation for the taking of her property. As set forth in the report, this figure encompassed both the market value of Ms. Greene's taken seven acres, as well as the diminution in value of the one and a half acres she retained. The asserted value of the taken land and the severance damages were never separated out. Relying on the Nelson concept plan, Mr. Duffy simply arrived at a value for Ms. Greene's total holdings, subtracted a discounted value for the untaken land, and then asserted that Ms. Greene was due the difference.7
Mr. Duffy explained in his report that he discounted the value of the untaken land in this calculation to account for a loss of what he asserted were “economies of scale.” In the Nelson concept plan, eleven single-family homes were located on the untaken land, near the top of the crescent shape of Ms. Greene's total property. Mr. Duffy opined that eleven single-family lots would be less appealing to a developer than developing the entire property as a whole with the condominium unit and twenty-four single-family houses; thus he reduced the per-lot value of the remaining eleven lots by ten percent.8 Subsequently, when Mr. Duffy was deposed, he said nothing about economies of scale. He admitted that he had not personally determined whether there was a unity of use—that is, a functional integration—between the taken and untaken land; he had simply taken the Nelson concept plan as a given in assessing the value of Ms. Greene's land. Relying on the Nelson concept plan, Mr. Duffy disclaimed that the taken portion of the property added value to the untaken portion, asserting instead that:
[w]e viewed the property as two separate categories. We looked at it as multi-family and residential. And to the extent that there are separate uses, they should be considered that way. So I don't know that [the taken land] would add necessarily, value to [the untaken land] as an independent item.
When asked “if you remove [the taken land] ... you could still develop [the untaken land] by placing these 11 houses on it” as called for by the Nelson concept plan, Mr. Duffy responded affirmatively, “I believe that's correct.”
The District filed a motion in limine in which it argued that Ms. Greene could not present evidence of severance damages absent a showing of unity of use. In particular the District argued that Ms. Greene had known about its interest in revitalizing the Skyland area for over a decade, and yet had waited until after the District filed the condemnation action to assess the development potential of her land. Regarding the Nelson concept plan, the District argued it was too...
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