State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Barron

• Decision Date: 14 March 1966
• Docket Number: No. 1,No. 51746,51746,1
• Citation: 400 S.W.2d 33
• Parties: STATE of Missouri ex rel. STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION of Missouri, Respondent, v. Mary BARRON et al., on Exceptions of Manchester Shopping Center, Inc., aCorporation, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 33

400 S.W.2d 33

STATE of Missouri ex rel. STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION of

Missouri, Respondent, v. Mary BARRON et al., on Exceptions of Manchester Shopping

Center, Inc., aCorporation, Appellant.

No. 51746.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

March 14, 1966.

John Rickhoff, Walter Wehrle, Clayton, for appellant.

Robert L. Hyder, Jefferson City, C.J. McEnery, Jr., Kirkwood, for respondent.

HOUSER, Commissioner.

State Highway Commission condemned a strip of land approximately 35 feet wide and 596 feet long out of the property of Manchester Shopping Center, Inc. located on the south side of Manchester Road in the City of Manchester in St. Louis County. This is an appeal from a judgment entered upon a jury verdict for $7,500 following a trial of the landowner's exceptions to the commissioners' award of $7,000. Landowner claimed damages in the amount of $60,000 and offered evidence in support thereof. The amount in dispute therefore exceeds $15,000. Accordingly we have appellate jurisdiction. City of St. Louis v. Union Quarry & Construction Co., Mo.Sup., 394 S.W.2d 300; State ex rel. Kansas City Power & Light Co. v. Salmark Home Builders, Inc., Mo.Sup., 350 S.W.2d 771; Constitution, Art. V, § 3, V.A.M.S.; § 477.040, V.A.M.S.

The condemned strip, approximately 20,000 square feet, was taken out of a tract of 10.8 acres purchased as raw land in October, 1959 for $88,241.78. The entire tract fronted 596 feet on Manchester Road and had a depth of 1,000 feet on the west and 500 feet on the east. A creek formed the rear boundary. The property was graded at considerable expense and a shopping center was built on the front part of the property in 1960. It consisted of two buildings containing 10 stores and a parking lot with spaces for 175 cars. The president of the corporation testified that the total cost of land and buildings was $420,183.19; that the cost of grading the 35-foot strip was $8,989.62, the cost of crushed rock put on the strip was $2,285 and the cost of a sign erected on the strip (removed by the taking) was $3,216.60; that taking the strip reduced the number of parking spaces in front of the buildings by 50--from 175 to 125. Landowner's witnesses estimated the damages, including the value of the land taken, the reduction of the number of parking spaces and the change from a level entrance from Manchester Road to two abrupt, steep entrances, at from $60,000 to $65,425 on the basis of market value of the entire tract before and after the taking. The commission's witnesses placed the damages at from $5,500 to $6,700.

The substance of the sole point raised by appellant is that the court erred in admitting and not striking the testimony of the commission's expert witness Tom McReynolds who, in developing the basis for the expression of his opinion as to the market value of the subject property, stated various details relating to recent sales of other properties in the vicinity. Appellant concedes that a witness giving his opinion as to value may state the reasons for his opinion and may state any circumstances which he would be allowed to give in evidence as independent facts, but argues that 'he cannot under the guise of fortifying his opinion state to the jury any facts that are based on hearsay.' It is appellant's position that Mr. McReynolds' testimony with reference to the other sales was not based upon firsthand knowledge of those sales but upon hearsay. It is also urged that Mr. McReynolds erroneously was permitted to state that said sales were comparable to the subject property.

Tom McReynolds, a real estate appraiser whose general qualifications are not questioned, testified as follows: He first became acquainted with the property in the summer of 1959 when it was vacant ground. He appraised it as vacant ground. Later he appraised it as of the value date in this case, as fully developed property. He found the before-taking value to be $328,200, valuing the land at $69,000 and the improvements at $259,200. The value of the improvements was arrived at on the basis of the square feet of building area, plus the square feet of concrete and asphalt paving and the damages in connection with moving the signs and light standards. He gave the value after the taking as $322,704, or $64,006 for the land and $258,698 for the improvements. He arrived at the land value as a result of several years of appraising property along Manchester Road, beginning in 1956, by studying and considering recent sales of property fronting on Manchester Road and other factors to which reference will be made. He particularly described four properties of 3.46 acres, 4.97 acres, 9.8 acres and 50 acres, respectively, located on the south side of Manchester Road within a half mile east of the subject property, which were sold from 1957 through 1960. These tracts were located outside the city limits of Manchester but were zoned for the same uses for which the subject property was zoned. In each instance Mr. McReynolds gave the name of the purchaser distance from the subject property, date of sale, dimensions, acreage, contour, terrain, and book and page of the deed records where the transaction was recorded. He also described a property sold in 1963, a one-acre tract located 2800 feet east of the subject property. His original information as to these sales came from investigating the land records, after which he consulted the purchasers to verify the amounts paid, relying upon what the purchasers told him. In no case, however, did he state to the jury the amount of the purchase price. In forming his opinion he relied in part upon these sales and upon an investigation he made of a number of other sales of properties all along on both sides of Manchester Road from Mason Road on the east of Clarkson Road on the west (a distance of six miles) while appraising for the state highway department, as supplemented by information gathered on subsequent appraisals for a number of private individuals on Manchester Road. (An objection to the testimony about the 50-acre tract was sustained on the ground that it was not comparable. Numerous objections to the results of his search of the records, on the basis of the best evidence rule, and to the verifications of purchase price given by the purchasers, on the basis of the hearsay rule, were duly made and consistently overruled.) Mr. McReynolds' opinion, based partly upon the sales of the foregoing properties and purchase prices paid for them, was also based upon other factors which he stated a reasonably prudent buyer would take into consideration in buying a shopping center, such as location, accessibility, quality and size of improvements, ingress and egress, type and character of tenants, the leases, rentals, available parking facilities, competition and rate of population growth in the area. His final conclusion was that the damages to the land amounted to $4,994 or $5,000 in round numbers, plus $500, the cost of relocating the sign, or a total damage of $5,500.

We have concluded that the court did not err in admitting the opinion testimony of this witness as to the value of the subject property before and after the taking, based in part upon what he ascertained by investigating the land records and what the purchasers told him they paid for these properties.

We approve and endorse the following statement of the law on this subject as recently expounded by Ruark, J. in State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Bloomfield Tractor Sales, Inc., Mo.App., 381 S.W.2d 20, l.c. 23, 24, 25: 'There is no exact rule by which the qualification of a witness to testify as to the value of land can be measured. Love v. United States, 8th Cir., 141 F.2d 981, 984. As a general rule, the market value of real estate is established by voluntary sales of other similar property made in the same general vicinity and not too remote in time. Jackson County v. Meyer, Mo., 356 S.W.2d 892, and cases at 894; Missouri Public Service Co. v. Hunt, Mo.App., 274 S.W.2d 27; City of St. Louis v. Buselaki, 336 Mo. 693, 80 S.W.2d 853; 85 A.L.R.2D 110, 119. ¹ Consequently the witness (other than the owner) must, in ordinary circumstances, have some knowledge or information as to sales of similar or comparable property. Generally stated, the knowledge of the witness must be such as is demanded by the nature of the subject matter and such as can reasonably be expected in the circumstances. The means of knowledge, and therefore the requirements in respect to qualification, may be higher in an area where there are frequent sales of similar property and lower where such sales are infrequent or nonexistent. 32 C.J.S. Evidence § 545, p. 301; Orgel, Valuation under ...