When you raise 13 issues on appeal, you shouldn't be surprised if the court balks at analyzing them all. That was the case in City of Gulfport v. Dedeaux Utility Co., No. 2014-CA-00556-SCT (Mar. 24, 2016), where the Mississippi Supreme Court didn't address the majority of the points raised by the city on appeal, but narrowed down the list to five. And of those five, the court found error in only one.
You can slog through the details in the court's opinion, but let's see if we can't give you the highlights.
Most of the issues raised on appeal were the result of the city's delay in actually taking possession of Dedeaux, a PUC-regulated utility. The city waited eight years after it filed the taking action to do so. The city filed its condemnation action in 1996, but did not physically take possession until 2004, after the eminent domain valuation trial. In the interim, Dedeaux continued to possess and operate the utility. After the appeals court ordered a new trial, the second jury awarded Dedeaux nearly $2 million more, and another appeal, followed by another remand and retrial, followed.
In Round 3, the jury awarded Dedeaux nearly $3 million more than the second trial, and the city appealed again. The court of appeals affirmed the verdict, but ordered a limited remand to allow the trial judge to calculate the interest owed on the award.
- The court of appeals held that the utility should be valued as a "going concern," which meant that compensation would be calculated based on (1) the date of the taking action, plus (2) the value of any assets which Dedeaux added in the time between that date and the time the city took actual possession. This was really two takings, so there should be two valuation dates.
- The court also held that the compensation for the after-acquired assets could be reduced by the revenue Dedeaux generated after the city's filing of the condemnation action, but that the set off could only be against the revenue generated by those after-acquired assets.
- There being two valuations, in effect, the court also concluded that there should be two calcultions for the interest owed on the difference between the earlier verdicts and the verdict in Trial #3.
- The one issue on which the court agreed with the City was the rate of interest. Mississippi statutes require the payment of "legal interest," but do not define the term. The trial court concluded the rate was 8%, based on a separate statute which imposes that rate for "notes, accounts, and contracts." Yet another statute requires a rate set by a judge for interest on judgments or decrees. The court of appeals concluded that this latter statute governed, and thus it was error for the trial court to have imposed the blanket 8% rate without trying to figure out a reasonable rate under the judgment statute.
- Finally, the court held that the jury's apparent splitting of the difference between Dedeaux's valuation and the city's (exactly down the middle - Dedeaux asked for $14,165,556, while the city argued for $4,109,289, and the verdict was for $7,082,778) was not, by itself, evidence of a "compromise" or "quotient" verdict. Those are limited to situations where there is affirmative evidence that the jurors actually agreed in advance to average the damages. Here, the city produced no such evidence, and the half-way verdict, standing alone, was not sufficient to overturn the result.
City of Gulfport v. Dedeaux Utility Co., No. 2014-CA-00556-SCT (Miss. Mar. 24, 2016)
