Can Juries Adequately Evaluate Eminent Domain Cases?

Jury Trials. The symbol of the American justice system. Having twelve of your peers evaluate your case to render a fair and just verdict.

That is how juries are often described in America, at least in courtrooms in front of juries. Outside the courtroom, however, in law offices across the United States, juries are avoided like the plague. Why, you might ask? Don't juries hold this system together and generally do the best they can to be fair to everyone? Of course they do, but sometimes they just mess up. A perfect example is a jury trial I was at just last week.

The trial, as you might expect, surrounded an eminent domain taking. It was for a road improvement project (the road was being widened and flattened for safety) in which the nearest 25-30 feet of the landowner's property was being acquired in fee, with another 25-30 feet on top of that for a temporary easement (construction limits). Overall the taking amounted to 10 acres or so, of a 60 acre tract. With 50 acres left, it would seem that the landowner wouldn't be left so bad off.

But he had a house on the property, and it was right in the middle of the taking area. This means it had to go. As I've mentioned before, the formula for acquiring only part of a piece of land by eminent domain is to determine the value of the entire parcel before the acquisition, determine the value of the entire parcel remaining after the acquisition, subtract the first from the second, and you have your answer. With a house there before and gone after, the damages, as you can imagine, are going to be fairly substantial.

The main issue in this case, as you might imagine, was the value of the house. See, the house itself was right smack in the middle of being renovated. Sheetrock was missing, wires were exposed, the house was a mess (and therefore not very valuable in the eyes of the government agency). But the landowner was renovating the house himself, and had put much of his blood, sweat, and tears into it. Although it is not a compensible item, the jury heard about what the guy had done to his house - and he actually shed a tear on the stand!

As the case progressed, there were no big surprises. The landowner and his expert testified, and the government and their expert testified. I believe the landowners expert computed $220,000 in damages, and the government body's computed $80,000. At closing, the landowner's attorney did throw out a little fire and brimstone, making it clear that this taking was cutting them to the bone. But it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

Then the jury is out. They deliberate for a bit and are ready to return their verdict. Here it comes... are you ready... $300,000!! Although in the grand scheme of things that's not a lot of money, consider that it is a full $80,000 over what the landowner's expert appraiser even testified to! The verdict was shocking to say the least.

When it was all over, we got a chance to talk to the jurors (if they want) and some did. What we found out was astonishing. They said they just disregarded all of the jury instructions because they weren't fair! So instead of using the formula they tried to determine what a brand new house would cost and gave him that!

This is why jury trials are scary, and why they may not be good for eminent domain cases. What the jury never heard was that relocation benefits, a completely different set of rules and regulations, takes care of re-establishing the landowner in a new home. Without that information the jury figured the landowner would be out on his own with nowhere to go. So they decided to fore go the rules and initiate their own justice.

And the crazy thing is that no one had any way of knowing they'd do this. And even worse, in the aftermath, as a (current) government attorney, it is going to be very hard in the future to try to get that information to the jury.

These cases are so complicated that even novice attorneys can screw up eminent domain cases (that is a story for a different day, but involves an appeal to the state Supreme Court and a new case filed in Federal Court, all to save an attorney who royally messed up).

Juries are the foundation of our Justice System, but sometimes they can do crazy things, both for and against landowners in eminent domain cases. Remember this when you take your case to a jury - you never know what might happen!

Eminent Domain Attorney