Burlington Northern Railroad v. Bair

837 F. Supp. 298, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16486, 1993 WL 479751
Procedural entryThis page is a short order in Burlington Northern Railroad v. Bair. Read the opinion of the Court — 815 F. Supp. 1223
District Court, S.D. Iowa·Decided June 11, 1993·No. No. 4:90CV-60406·Published

Opinion

RULING AND ORDER

STUART, Senior District Judge.

Plaintiffs Motion for Instructions and defendant’s Motion for Reconsideration came on for hearing May 25, 1993. After having heard the additional evidence and arguments of counsel and after having considered the pertinent filings, the court enters the following ruling and order.

Plaintiffs Motion for Instructions

In its motion, plaintiff pointed out that the court had erroneously computed the deduction for intangibles under the principle the court applied. The defendant did not respond to this claim and the court agrees with BN. The court accepted the values for the intangibles established by BN’s experts and determined they equalled approximately 10% of the unit value of the railroad. The court erroneously took 10% of the value of the intangibles rather than 10% of the unit value to arrive at the deduction for the value of the intangibles. The deduction should be $385 million rather than $67.2 million. The plaintiff in drawing the order for judgment, shall make that correction.

Defendant’s Amended Motion for Reconsideration

I. Intangibles

A.

The defendant’s principal position in regard to the deduction of intangibles from the unit value of the railroad was the claim that Iowa taxed the intangibles of commercial and industrial enterprises in Iowa. The court did not agree for the reasons stated in the Ruling and Order filed March 9, 1993. 815 F.Supp. 1223

The defendant did claim that a deduction for intangibles would be very difficult to administer, but little evidence was offered on that issue. In order for the appellate court to have a complete picture of the administrative problems, the court received additional evidence “on the limited issue of the problems that the court’s ruling on intangibles would present to the state.” That evidence was presented at the May 25, 1993 hearing.

Although obtaining and analyzing the information required to value intangibles will be more complex and expensive, the state can arrive at values for the railroad’s intangibles. However, that increased burden does not permit the state to tax BN’s intangibles when commercial and industrial intangibles are not taxed as real estate. The 4R Act requires the state to treat railroads the same way other taxpayers in Iowa are treated.

The court finds that its decision that identifiable intangibles that can be valued must be deducted from the unit price of the railroad is susceptible to administration by the Director.

B.

The Director claims that BN has failed to prove the value of its intangibles by a preponderance of the evidence because it selected only certain intangibles for valuation and subtraction when some intangibles may have a negative value.

The court is satisfied that the methods used by BN to arrive at values for the intangibles are acceptable. The Director offered no evidence of different values. Under the present record the court believes that reasonable estimates of the value of the selected intangibles have been established by BN. It is too late to reargue these matters in a motion to reconsider. The director may take issue with the methods used and the values derived in the future.

As stated on page 36 of its ruling and order, the court was troubled by the fact that there was no proof of the contribution these intangibles made to the case flow used in the capitalization formula or the price of stock in the stock and debt method. I contemplated holding, for that reason, that BN failed to prove what amount should have been deducted from the unit price. Perhaps that would have been the proper ruling, but I believed that the method used to deduct personal property could be applied to intangibles, even though replacement cost and income evaluations are being used with book value.

[300]*300The court denies the defendants motion for reconsideration of its ruling on the deducti-bility of the identified intangibles.

II. Split between operating and non-operating property.

The court is satisfied that the evidence supports the acceptance of the Director’s calculation of the rates between BN’s operating and non-operating property. Mr. Goodwins’ use of income rather than value to determine the proper percentage of non-operating property, in the court’s opinion, is not correct. The ratio of income from operating property to the income from non-operating property would not necessarily represent the ratio of the value of operating and non-operating property. The comparison should be between the values of the operating and non-operating properties, not the income they produce. The court does not recall that an issue was ever made of the Director’s calculation during the trial.

Plaintiffs motion to reconsider the split between operating and non-operating property is denied.

III. Split between realty and personalty.

The director claims:

The split between BNNR’s taxable and non-taxable property should be calculated by reference only to book values of property owned by BNNR where only “property owned by BNRR is valued in the BNRR unit.”

In the court’s opinion the value of leases is picked up in the railroad’s unit value in both the income and stock and debt appraisal methods and the break out of personal property must include leased property. The court believes this argument was adequately treated in the ruling and order.

Defendant’s motion to reconsider on this ground is denied.

IV. Yield capitalization rate

A-l

The director argues that the court should have used the beta coefficient of 1.127 obtained from the tapes of the Center for Research on Security Prices (CRSP tapes). The court used a beta of 1.2, but did not explain why. The director asks why the “beta from the CRSP tapes is not useable in this instance.”

The court has not reviewed the evidence to answer this question but its recollection is that the CRSP tape beta was the beta established before the BN reorganization that greatly increased the railroad’s debt. The court felt that the increased leverage would cause the beta to rise. A beta of 1.2 is within the range estimated by BN’s witness and is the industry average beta used by BN in Exhibit 1 at page 19.

A-2

The director continues to argue that his cost of capital determination was supported by more than a preponderance of the evidence including internal calculations by BNRR, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Director’s experts. He does not point to any specific evidence.

The court believes this issue was adequately treated in the ruling and order and defendant’s motion for reconsideration on this ground is denied.

B and C

In these subdivisions defendant argues that the market risk premium and BNRR’s equity rate are not affected by BN’s high level of leverage after restructuring. The court disagrees and discussed this issue adequately in the ruling and order.

D

In calculating BN’s capitalization rate the court used the after tax debt rate. The parties agree that this was error. The court failed to recognize the distinction between capitalization rates calculated by the discounted cash flow method and the rate calculated by the income capitalization method.

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Burlington Northern Railroad v. Bair, 837 F. Supp. 298, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16486, 1993 WL 479751 (S.D. Iowa 1993).

837 F. Supp. 298 (Burlington Northern Railroad v. Bair) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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Burlington Northern Railroad v. Bair
815 F. Supp. 1223 (S.D. Iowa, 1993)