United States v. Four Parcels of Land

20 F. Supp. 306, 1937 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1606
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedJuly 15, 1937
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 20 F. Supp. 306 (United States v. Four Parcels of Land) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Four Parcels of Land, 20 F. Supp. 306, 1937 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1606 (S.D.N.Y. 1937).

Opinion

LEIBELL, District Jftdge.

Plaintiff, United States of America, moves “for an order confirming the report of the Commissioners of Appraisal filed herein on the 10th day of May, 1937, and for a final decree of condemnation.”

Four parcels of real estate were involved in this proceeding. As to parcels A and B there is no controversy. Between the filing [307]*307of the original and amended petitions herein, agreements were reached by which the owners of said parcels accepted the amounts deposited in the registry of the court with the declaration of taking, by the Secretary of the Treasury on December 13, 1935.

As to parcel D, the owner of the fee filed no exceptions to the report and apparently is content with his award. The only controversial issue in respect to said parcel D is the amount that should be allowed the Delite Pastry Company, Inc., the tenant of said premises, for certain fixtures and bakery equipment used in its business. The claim covered fifty-one separate items, five of which were withdrawn before the commissioners, and of the remaining forty-six the commissioners allowed only seventeen and awarded therefor the total sum of $2,-668.87. As to the amounts awarded for items which were allowed in the commissioners’ decision, the principle laid down in Benedict v. City of New York (C.C.A.) 98 F. 789, 790, applies: “In proceedings to acquire property for public use, the court, on an application to confirm the award of the commissioners of appraisal, will not ordinarily weigh conflicting evidence in considering whether it is adequate or excessive; but, if the commissioners have proceeded upon a wrong principle, the court will refuse to confirm.”

The same question was discussed in Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U.S. 282, 305, 13 S.Ct. 361, 393, 37 L.Ed. 170:

“In connection with this part of the subject, we may appropriately consider the objection made to the action of the court below in declining to review and pass upon the evidence that had been produced before the commissioners.
“If, as we have said, the court below was right in refusing to restrict the commissioners to a mere consideration of the evidence adduced, then it would seem to follow that the court could not be legitimately asked, in the absence of any exceptions based upon charges of fraud, corruption, or plain mistake on the part of the appraisers, to go into a consideration of the evidence. The court cannot bring into review before it the various sources and grounds of judgment upon which the appraisers have proceeded. The attempt to do so would transfer the function of finding the values of the lands from the appraisers to the court. Such a course would have presented a much more serious allegation of error than we find in the objection as made.
“The rule on this subject is so well settled that we shall content ourselves with repeating an apt quotation from Mills on Eminent Domain, (§ 246), made in the opinion of the court below: ‘An appellate court will not interfere with the report of commissioners to correct the amount of damages except in cases of gross error, showing prejudice or corruption. The commissioners hear the evidence, and frequently make their principal evidence out of a view of the premises, and this evidence cannot be carried up so as to correct the report as being against the weight of evidence. Hence, for an error in the judgment of commissioners in arriving at the amount of damages there can be no correction, especially where the evidence is conflicting. Commissioners are not bound by the opinions of experts or by the apparent weight of evidence, but may give their own conclusions.’ ”

As to the items that were allowed by the commissioners there might have been a question as to whether some of them were trade fixtures or equipment so attached to the realty that they could not be removed without substantial injury either to the real estate or to the fixtures. But the attorney for the plaintiff has moved for a confirmation of the report and filed no exceptions because, he states, he assumed that the tenant had accepted the commissioners’ decision on all the items and that the tenant was not filing any exceptions. However, the tenant orally objected on the return day of the motion as to items not allowed and as to the amounts awarded for items that were allowed. On the question of the amounts awarded for items allowed the principle from the Shoemaker Case applies. A consideration of the items not allowed classifies them as trade fixtures or equipment that were not so attached to the realty as required any award therefor in this proceeding.

In New York Life Ins. Co. v. Allison, 107 F. 179, 181, 182, the Circuit Court of Appeals of this, the Second Circuit, held:

“In determining what annexations to real property, of chattels, constitute a part of the realty, the federal courts ascertain the local law of real property by the decisions of the courts of the states in which the property is situated, and, when these decisions are explicit and uniform, adopt them as the rule of decision. Davis v. [308]*308Mason, 1 Pet. 503, 7 L.Ed. 239; Hinde v. Vattier, 5 Pet. 398, 8 L.Ed. 168; Suydam v. Williamson, 24 How. 427, 16 L.Ed. 742; Williams v. Kirtland, 13 Wall. 306, 20 L.Ed. 683. The general rule derived from the decisions of the courts of New York is that unless the annexation is one of a permanent character, so that the machine or other chattel cannot be removed without substantial injury to the freehold, or unless the annexation is of a machine or chattel especially adapted for use in the particular place where it has been put, the purpose of the annexation and the intention with which it has been made are the most important considerations, and are the determining criterion, whether it is a fixture or a chattel. In McRea v. Central Nat. Bank, 66 N.Y. 489, the court of appeals used this language :
“ ‘If the article is attached for temporary use, with the intention of removing it, a mortgagee cannot interfere with its removal by the mortgagor. If it is placed there for the permanent improvement of the freehold, he may. The mode of annexation may, it is true, in the absence of any proof of intention,. be controlling. It may be in itself so inseparable and permanent as to render the article necessarily a part of the realty, and, in case of less permanent mode of attachment, may afford convincing evidence that the intention was that the attachment should be permanent; as, for instance, where the building is constructed expressly to receive the machine or other article, and it could not be removed without material injury to the building, or the article would be of no value except for use in that particular building, or could not be removed therefrom without being destroyed or greatly damaged/ ‘These are the tests which have been frequently applied in determining whether the annexation was intended to be temporary or permanent, but they are not the only ones. Nor is it indispensable that any of these conditions should exist/
“After reviewing some of the leading cases which discuss the criterion of a fixture, the court said:
“‘The object, and not the method of the attachment, appears to be the controlling factor/

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Bluebook (online)
20 F. Supp. 306, 1937 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1606, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-four-parcels-of-land-nysd-1937.