Stone v. Del., L. & W. R. Co.
| Citation | 257 Pa. 456,101 A. 813 |
| Parties | STONE v. DELAWARE, L. & W. R. CO. |
| Decision Date | 16 April 1917 |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
257 Pa. 456
STONE
v.
DELAWARE, L. & W. R. CO.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
April 16, 1917.
Appeal from Court of Common Pleas, Lackawanna County.
Action by John L. Stone against the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company. Verdict for plaintiff for $13,865, and judgment thereon, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.
Argued before BROWN, C. J., and POTTER, STEWART, FRAZER, and WALLING, JJ.
J. H. Oliver, H. A. Knapp, and D. R. Reese, all of Scranton, for appellant. John P. Kelly and A. D. Dean, both of Scranton, for appellee.
FRAZER, J. Defendant appeals from the judgment of the court of common pleas entered on a verdict for plaintiff awarding the sum of $13,865 damages for land taken, or injured, by the relocation, straightening, and widening of defendant's right of way. The errors assigned are to the charge of the court, and various rulings on the admission and rejection of testimony touching the question of damages.
The first assignment of error complains that the portion of the charge quoted was erroneous in that it permitted the jury to fix the damages not upon the value of the property for the purposes for which it was
actually available at the time of the appropriation, but upon the value incident to the possible future growth of the community. The trial judge stated in part that:
"The witnesses gave their reasons for arriving at the conclusion that this was not only a very valuable piece of land as a farm; that it was available for town lots or plots in larger or smaller tracts; that within the last 25 or 30 years a good many plots of land have been laid out and have been sold at various prices, and basing their opinions upon the sale of lands thereabouts and of the possible future growth of the community, they arrived at the figures to which they have testified. This is a proper way of arriving at a conclusion under the facts of this case, and it is for you to take into consideration their accuracy and whether their opinions are entitled to the weight plaintiff asks to be given to them."
The jurors, in our opinion, were not misled by this instruction. The rule in ascertaining the measure of damages is that the jury may consider not only the present use and condition of the property, but such use to which it was then adapted, and prospective advantage at the time attaching to it a present value, or any purpose to which it could reasonably be anticipated the land would in the future be applied, excluding, however, speculative values. Marine Coal Co. v. Pittsburgh, McKeesport & Youghiogheny R. R. Co., 246 Pa. 478, 92 Atl. 688. The instruction quoted is not open to defendant's objection that the jury was permitted to find speculative damages. Plaintiff's land was suburban property and, as stated in the charge, a number of similar tracts in the neighborhood had been recently plotted and sold as building lots. The possibility of utilizing the land in question for this purpose was not therefore merely remote and speculative, but a legitimate prospect for consideration by the witnesses and the jury in forming their opinion as to its present value.
The second assignment complams of that part of the charge which permitted the jury, in fixing the damages to the land as of the time of the taking, to consider the "different elements that enter into the damages, such as the inconvenience in getting from one part of the farm to the other, the destruction of the living spring, the damage to the orchard, the cutting off of the view, the use of the old road as compared with the new one which was put in by the defendant company, and in this way to add a total, as it were, of the entire amount of damage caused to the farm taken as a whole." This instruction defendant contends authorized the jury to ascertain these various items of damage separately, and arrive at a total by adding them...
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