State ex rel. Department of Transportation v. Mercury Development, Inc.
This text of 1982 OK 52 (State ex rel. Department of Transportation v. Mercury Development, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.
Opinion
The appellant, The Department of Transportation (State), filed two (2) separate condemnation proceedings against appellees involving two (2) contiguous tracts of land.
Commissioners were appointed and they filed their separate reports for each tract. Both State and appellees filed demands for trial by jury.
Thereafter, State filed an amended petition in one of the cases and added additional land. The trial court vacated the Report of the Commissioners that had been filed in that case. The two cases were then consoli[506]*506dated pursuant to the State’s request. The trial court then entered an order appointing Commissioners and directing them to make another appraisal which covered all the land in the original appraisals and the additional land that was included in State’s amended petition. In due time Commissioners filed their report. Although this report covered all the property that was included in the two original reports, it was an entirely different report and included additional land. Notice of this Commissioners’ report was timely mailed to the parties. Neither party filed exceptions to the report nor filed demand for Jury Trial.
More than nine (9) months after the second report was filed, appellees filed a motion to strike the case from the trial docket and to enter judgment for the amount of the Commissioners’ award. This motion was based upon the theory that the Commissioners’ report had become final and conclusive since neither party filed exceptions to the Commissioners’ report nor filed a demand for a jury trial within the time prescribed by statute,1 which is “within sixty (60) days after the filing of such report.”
The trial court sustained appellees’ motion, struck the case from the docket and entered judgment for appellees.
State’s original demands for jury trial were directed against two separate Commissioners’ reports. Although the reports covered two tracts of land that were contiguous, the two tracts were separate and distinct. A demand for jury trial filed in one of the cases would not have been sufficient to constitute a demand for jury trial in the other case.
After State amended its petition in one case and added additional land, State included in its condemnation proceedings land which had not been appraised. After the cases were consolidated at State’s request, Commissioners were appointed to appraise all the property in the consolidated cases and their report fixed the value in one lump sum. This report was filed approximately two and one-half (2⅛) years after State filed its demands for jury trial prior to consolidation and prior to State filing its amended petition.
In Board of County Comm’rs of Creek County v. Casteel, Okl., 522 P.2d 608 (1976) we said:
Condemnation is a special proceeding recognized as such by the Oklahoma Constitution. Since condemnation is in a procedural category of its own, the legislature has passed special statutes for the just and orderly functioning of the court when hearing these special proceedings. The procedural requirements set forth for condemnation cases in the statutes are reasonable and must be complied with. The landowner waived his right to a hearing on the necessity of the taking when he did not object to the report of the commissioners within the statutorily prescribed time.
It is evident that when State filed its amended petition, included additional property to be condemned, the two cases were consolidated, and the Commissioners were [507]*507appointed to appraise, in one report, all the property, that the demands for jury trial previously filed would not constitute a demand for a jury trial directed to the last Commissioners’ report.
The procedural requirements for demand for jury trial were not met and the trial court correctly ruled that State was not entitled to a jury trial.
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED.
Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI
Related
Cite This Page — Counsel Stack
1982 OK 52, 645 P.2d 505, 1982 Okla. LEXIS 213, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-department-of-transportation-v-mercury-development-inc-okla-1982.