US v. CERTAIN LAND SITUATED IN CITY OF DETROIT

• Decision Date: 20 September 1982
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 79-73934.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. CERTAIN LAND SITUATED IN the CITY OF DETROIT, WAYNE COUNTY, STATE OF MICHIGAN; The Detroit International Bridge Company, a Michigan corporation; Roy G. Lancaster, President; Nash P. Sogoian, and The Treasurer of the City of Detroit, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan

547 F. Supp. 680

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. CERTAIN LAND SITUATED IN the CITY OF DETROIT, WAYNE COUNTY, STATE OF MICHIGAN; The Detroit International Bridge Company, a Michigan corporation; Roy G. Lancaster, President; Nash P. Sogoian, and The Treasurer of the City of Detroit, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 79-73934.

United States District Court, E. D. Michigan, S. D.

September 20, 1982.

Leonard R. Gilman, U. S. Atty. by Mark R. Werder, Asst. U. S. Atty., Detroit, Mich., for plaintiff.

Van Til, Kasiborski & Ronayne, P. C. by Lawrence R. Van Til, John J. Ronayne, III, Kenneth A. Flaska, Detroit, Mich., Butzel, Long, Gust, Klein & Van Zile by George H. Zinn, Jr., Gregory V. Murray, Detroit, Mich., for defendants Detroit Intern. Bridge Co. and Roy G. Lancaster, President.

Killebrew, Ihrie & Short, Peter B. Short, St. Clair Shores, Mich., for defendant Nash P. Sogoian.

OPINION

GILMORE, District Judge.

This case, which is a condemnation proceeding involving land adjoining the Ambassador Bridge Border Station in Detroit, is before the Court on a motion in limine by plaintiff United States, which asks this Court to determine defendants' appraisal to be inadmissible. For reasons given in this opinion, the Court denies the motion.

Any broad pretrial exclusion of evidence (here the defendants' entire appraisal) in an eminent domain proceeding, or any other proceeding, must be approached with great caution. Although the use of a motion in limine is authorized for federal courts,¹ its allowance by the trial court is purely discretionary and generally is confined to very specific evidentiary issues of an extremely prejudicial nature. As pointed out in Sperberg v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 519 F.2d 708, 712 (6th Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 987, 96 S.Ct. 395, 46 L.Ed.2d 303: "Orders in limine which exclude broad categories of evidence should rarely be employed. A better practice is to deal with questions of admissibility of evidence when they arise."

There is even more reason to follow such an approach in an eminent domain case where the Fifth Amendment requires that "just compensation" be given for land taken by the government. And F.R.C.P. 71A(h) leaves to a jury, if properly demanded, and one has been demanded here, the issue of just compensation. Both the constitutional command and the right to jury trial require that a court be cautious in making broad pretrial rulings that could prejudice defendants' claim before allowing the jury to hear any evidence or before disputed facts can be put to normal evidentiary tests in open court.

The preference of this Court for deciding questions of admissibility at trial rather than through a pretrial motion in limine does not, of course, eliminate the Government's legal argument that certain uses proposed in defendants' appraisal are inadmissible as a matter of law. Nor does it mean that everything in defendants' appraisal will be heard by the jury. But it does mean that questions of admissibility of the appraisal will be passed on at trial when objections are raised in the proper trial context.

The Government's motion in limine raises six objections to the appraisal produced by defendant Detroit International Bridge Company (DBIC): 1) the appraisal is predicated on exploiting the government's specific need and intended purpose of operating a Custom's inspection station on the condemned land; 2) the proposed use purports to derive benefit from an exclusive license to provide a service attendant to Custom's inspection, and this license has been expressly denied; 3) the value of the land to DIBC is nontransferable and arises from its unique adaptability to defendants' intended use; 4) there is no combined holding or actual unitary use that could give rise to a legitimate claim for severance damages; 5) the appraisal assesses value as of a post-taking date; and 6) the appraisal's use of a capitalization of income method is too speculative.

The crucial and basic consideration in any eminent domain case is that private property shall not be taken without just compensation. The only standard of compensation mandated by the Fifth Amendment is that it be "just" which, in turn, "evokes ideas of fairness and equity". See United States v. 320 Acres of Land More or Less In the County of Monroe, State of Florida, 605 F.2d 762, 780 (5th Cir. 1980). Thus the only absolute standard in an eminent domain case is that of "just compensation" provided by the Constitution, and the only sure guide in a difficult case is the consideration of what compensation is "just" both to the owner whose property is being taken and the public. See United States v. Commodities Trading Corp., 339 U.S. 121, 123, 70 S.Ct. 547, 549, 94 L.Ed. 707 (1950). The underlying principle is that the dispossessed owner "is entitled to be put in as good a position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken. He must be made whole but is not entitled to more." Olson v. United States, 292 U.S. 246, 255, 54 S.Ct. 704, 708, 78 L.Ed. 1236 (1934).

A brief description of significant facts is necessary. Defendant DIBC owns the Ambassador Bridge connecting the United States with Canada, as well as the current bridge plaza on the U.S. side. The plaza, which was built in 1929, is incapable of handling the heavy traffic load. It is particularly congested because U.S. Customs requires approximately 50 percent of the trucks crossing the bridge to submit to a secondary inspection. This means that these trucks must pull over and park. Prior to the condemnation of the land in question, trucks were required to park on the present plaza to await secondary inspection, causing traffic congestion, long waits, and dangerous conditions.

The problem is demonstrated by the map of the location set forth below.

In 1975, DIBC purchased parcel A1, the land which is at the center of the dispute here, from Overland-Western Corporation. This parcel had been used by Overland-Western as a trucking terminal and had facilities for such. This is the land, along with parcel A2, also owned by DIBC, and parcel A3, owned by defendant Sogoian, which was condemned by the government. Possession of the property was turned over to the General Services Administration on January 23, 1980. The property was to house a secondary inspection facility for U. S. Customs.

Central to the dispute here is the presence in defendants' appraisal of the "KNI proposal", which provides a basis for DIBC's view of what is just compensation. Kuehne and Nagel, Inc. ("KNI") is an international trucking services company which in May of 1979 made a proposal to DIBC to lease parcel A1 from DIBC and establish a service for truckers crossing the Ambassador Bridge. There is a factual dispute as to the precise relationship of this service to U.S. Customs' secondary inspection process, but some kind of relationship was to exist. Truckers waiting secondary inspection were to drop off their trucks in parcel A1, and KNI personnel would prepare the truck for Customs inspection (unload the cargo, etc.). The trucker would then be able to avoid the long delays accompanying the present long waits for inspection. KNI was to charge a fee for such services and thus be compensated.

DIBC claims that just compensation requires the value of the KNI proposal to the DIBC be considered. The Government seeks to exclude this value completely and would base its just compensation on essentially the value of parcel A1 as a trucking terminal. It advances legal arguments in support of this view.

The Government argues that DIBC's appraisal assumes an income flow from the KNI operation that would depend on U.S. Customs relocating its inspection to parcel A1, with parcel A1 being under the ownership of DIBC. It contends that any value attributable to the presence of U.S. Customs in parcel A1 must be excluded as a matter of law under the rule of United States v. Cors, 337 U.S. 325, 69 S.Ct. 1086, 93 L.Ed. 1392 (1949), which held that special value to the government, a value created solely by the government's demand for property, is not compensable. Cors stands for the proposition that "hold-up" value to the government cannot be considered fair market value, and that the Government should not have to pay for a value which it, itself, created, for that is not a fair market value, because it does not reflect what a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller. There is nothing complicated about the Cors rule. It is simply an expression of the command that just compensation be fair both to the buyer and to the public as a whole.

Even if the appraisal contained elements of value based on the presence of U.S. Customs on parcel A1, this would not necessarily represent the special or extraordinary demand referred to in Cors. This is not an emergency situation, nor is national defense involved, and it is unclear at this point as to what "hold-up" value exists, if any at all. There is a clear factual dispute as to whether there is a "hold-up" value, and this dispute will have to be resolved through testimony at trial. DIBC, for example, has introduced affidavits which argue that the presence of customs was a preferred, but not a necessary, component of the KNI proposal, and that the KNI proposal for parcel A1 would have been able to work without the presence of U.S. Customs. Thus there is a factual dispute which must be decided through testimony at trial. If, after hearing all of the testimony, the Court finds that the presence of U.S. Customs is an essential part of the appraisal and that this constitutes "hold-up" value under Cors, the jury will be instructed not to consider any element of value based on the presence of U.S. Customs on parcel A1. But this issue cannot be resolved on a motion in limine prior to trial.

The Government next claims that a condemnee may not be compensated for the value of benefits conferred on his property because of its proximity to government property. This is the so-called ...