State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Crain

• Decision Date: 12 June 1973
• Docket Number: No. 34479,34479
• Parties: STATE of Missouri ex rel. STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION of Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Hartwell G. CRAIN et al., on exceptions of Clark A. Papin et al., Defendants-Appellants. . Louis District, Division One
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 867

496 S.W.2d 867

STATE of Missouri ex rel. STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION of

Missouri, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Hartwell G. CRAIN et al., on exceptions of Clark A. Papin et

al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 34479.

Missouri Court of Appeals, St. Louis District, Division One.

June 12, 1973.

Joe Bill Carter, Carter & Newmark, Clayton, for defendants-appellants.

Donald L. Spry, Kirkwood, Robert L. Hyder, Chief Counsel, Jefferson City, for plaintiff-respondent.

DOWD, Chief Judge.

In this condemnation case the Commissioners awarded defendants $10,500. Both plaintiff and defendants filed exceptions. The jury then assessed defendants-appellants' damages at $7,500. Thereafter, judgment by way of refund was entered in favor of plaintiff for $3,000 plus interest.

The appellants raise two points on this appeal: 1) the court erred in allowing plaintiff to introduce the price that appellants had originally paid for the property; 2) the court erred in failing to allow appellants to introduce Exhibit W, which was an appraisal prepared for plaintiff.

Appellants are the owners of a motel located on U.S. Highway 66 in St. Louis County, Missouri, in the City of Crestwood. In 1967, eleven years after they had acquired the property, plaintiff condemned about 295 square feet fronting on the highway. The taking caused a decrease from 225 of frontage on the highway with no restriction of access to 145 feet of frontage with no restriction and 80 feet with partially restricted access.

Appellants sought damages of $40,000, claiming that the taking limited the access between the highway and an easement reserved for road purposes. Appellants' appraiser estimated damages as $36,900, and the State's appraisals of damages ranged from a high of $7,675 to a low of only $350. Appellants stated that a motel was not the most productive commercial use for the property.

In support of appellants' first point that it was error to allow plaintiff to admit into evidence the original price that appellants had paid for the property, appellants argue that the purchase was too remote in time to have probative value.

Generally, evidence of purchase price is competent to prove market value as of the time of taking, provided the purchase is not so remote in time that intervening conditions have arisen which eliminate the probative effect. State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Rauscher Chevrolet Company, 291 S.W.2d 89 (Mo.1956). The admissibility of evidence relating to the purchase price of property, however, is a matter within the trial court's discretion. Esmar v. Zurich Insurance Company, 485 S.W.2d 417 (Mo.1972). Unless evidence as to market value is wholly lacking in probative value, the weight to be given it, 'including remoteness and changes of circumstances from date of taking to date of sale, is for the jury under appropriate instruction.' State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Ogle, 402 S.W.2d 605, 611 (Mo.App.1966). Evidence as to the value of the property condemned that sheds light on the issue should be admitted, subject to the discretion of the trial court; and, artificial rules of evidence excluding from the jury matters which men consider in their everyday affairs, should not be applied. State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Barron, 400 S.W.2d 33 (Mo.1966).

In the Esmar case, the court held that the evidence of the original cost of the property was properly excluded as too remote when the property had been purchased twenty years before the damage occurred. On the other hand, in State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Johnson, 287 S.W.2d 835 (Mo.1956) evidence as to sale price was admitted when the sale took place more than 20 years before the taking. In Johnson the court found no error in allowing evidence that the property in question sold for $25,000.00 in 1929, where the property values in the area had increased since then and witnesses for both sides valued the property at the time of the taking at more than $25,000.00. In Land Clearance Authority v. Doerenhoefer, ...