Swift & Company v. Housing Authority of Plant City

106 So. 2d 616
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedNovember 12, 1958
Docket493
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 106 So. 2d 616 (Swift & Company v. Housing Authority of Plant City) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Swift & Company v. Housing Authority of Plant City, 106 So. 2d 616 (Fla. Ct. App. 1958).

Opinion

106 So.2d 616 (1958)

SWIFT & COMPANY, a corporation, etc., Appellant,
v.
The HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE CITY OF PLANT CITY, Florida, etc., Appellee.

No. 493.

District Court of Appeal of Florida. Second District.

November 12, 1958.

Allen, Dell, Frank & Trinkle, L. Robert Frank, Tampa, for appellant.

Liles & Edwards, Robert S. Edwards, Paul S. Buchman, Plant City, for appellee.

ALLEN, Judge.

This is an appeal from a final judgment in a condemnation suit. The Housing Authority of the City of Plant City sued to condemn certain land owned by Swift & Company and leased to certain others. The lessees waived any claim, and upon a stipulation of facts by the remaining parties, the trial judge denied defendant's proffer of evidence tending to show value of the land as phosphate land and entered judgment on a stipulated value as residential land. Defendant appeals.

The appellee, The Housing Authority, filed on April 19, 1957, its petition to condemn approximately ten acres of land located in Hillsborough County, Florida, and owned by appellant, Swift & Company. Appellee averred in its complaint that said land was vacant, unimproved and occupied only as truck crop lands under lease to other defendants named in the petition. These latter defendants were dismissed from the proceedings, or disclaimed an interest in said property.

To the condemnation petition appellant filed its answer averring that said property was valuable land and contained rich mineral and rock deposits, having been acquired by appellant for that reason, that said property was adjacent to and a part of other lands owned by appellant and that condemnation of the same would greatly depreciate and damage the value of said adjacent land.

*617 Prior to the pretrial conference, the appellant and the appellee entered into a written stipulation of facts, which, among other things, hereinafter discussed, admitted the right to condemn; the ownership of the property; the fact that appellee had taken the property under a declaration of taking; the purpose for which it was condemned; the Zoning Ordinance of Plant City, Florida; description, nature and locale of the property; the platted nature of a portion of the property; the extent of the testimony of appellee's appraisers as to the value of the property for residential purposes; the fact that said appraisers did not consider the phosphate content of said property or make any evaluation as to its market value as phosphate property; and the standard for setting a reasonable attorney's fee.

At the pretrial conference appellant asserted its right to prove at the trial the value of the land as phosphate land and proffered the evidence it proposed to establish such value. The appellee objected to this testimony, and the lower court sustained the objection, concluding "that the overall value is as a resident type and that it is not to be assessed for value as for phosphate mining purposes." Appellant announced that it had no further evidence to offer and the court then directed judgment be entered on the basis of appellee's appraisal of the land for residential use only.

Final judgment was thereupon entered, on January 22, 1958, reciting that the cause had been heard upon the stipulation of certain facts, that the defendant had proffered evidence in support of an enhanced value arising from mineral and rock deposits in the land in question, that the court sustained appellee's objection to the admission of the same, and that, in view of the fact that appellant announced it had no further testimony to offer, it was unnecessary to submit the cause to a jury.

The appellee argues, in its brief, at length under its Point 3:

"Did appellant's proffer made at the pretrial conference tend to prove the proper measure of damages?"

We shall not allude further to the question above stated by the appellee as we think the following excerpts from the pretrial conference show that the able trial judge, who presided at this conference, based his ruling squarely upon the theory that the zoning ordinance prohibited the mining of phosphate within the city limits of Plant City and that this, therefore, precluded any proof of value of the land as phosphate land. Clearly, the ruling was not based upon any technical objection to the proffer by defendant.

The ruling of the trial judge was made during a pretrial conference at which various stipulations had been filed by the parties admitting the above mentioned facts, such as the zoning ordinance, the value of the property for residential purposes, etc. The transcript of the trial proceedings, appearing on page 26 of the appendix of the appellant, states:

"Mr. Frank: If your Honor please, this is a pretrial conference called to determine the issues of this condemnation case, and it is the position of the Defendant that it is entitled to offer and prove at the trial of the case the value of the land as phosphate land. In support of this contention we offer and propose to prove the following facts:"

The defendant then set forth various facts to show the value of the phosphate in the land: the analyses of the samples of the phosphate bearing land, and the manner in which the engineer takes the analyses and computes the average run or per ton phosphate per acre, the amount of marketable phosphate, the total amount of tonnage in the land, the amount of overburden necessary to reach this tonnage and various other factors used by the appraiser in the phosphate field in determining the value of phosphate land.

*618 Then, on page 34 of the Appendix, appears the following:

"Our expert appraiser will testify that this land represents one of the choicest mineable pieces of phosphate land Swift could obtain; that it is superior in quality by virtue of its light overburden and deep phosphate strata; that based upon similar values of land in other parts of the phosphate field, the land is, in his opinion, worth after deducting reasonable costs of reclamation, in excess of $25,000.00, and added to this is approximately $5,000.00, the resulting loss on the necessary courtesy or border strip to be left on the border of the property in question to protect the proposed housing site in future mining operations, makes a total in excess of $30,000.00 loss."

The defendant next sought to offer proof of the time it would take to mine the land, the type of mining that would be necessary and other data relative to mining.

To the tendered proof, the condemnor offered the following objections (Appendix 35):

"Mr. Edwards: To which proffered testimony, may it please the Court, the housing authority objects on the grounds it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial and is not proper to be considered as an element of damages in this proceeding, and on the further grounds that:
"The existing zoning restrictions imposed by the zoning ordinance of the city of Plant City circumscribes the available uses to which the land may be devoted, said land being zoned R1 for residential use, and no evidence in support of an alleged enhanced value may be admitted where such enhanced value would be the result of a proscribed use.
"Most of said land lies within a platted subdivision, in which condition it is not adaptable to phosphate mining.
"Section 14 of the said zoning ordinance prohibited excavation of property, except for construction purposes.
"The proferred testimony does not tend to prove any proper measure of damages.

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Bluebook (online)
106 So. 2d 616, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/swift-company-v-housing-authority-of-plant-city-fladistctapp-1958.