Hold on. What is a criminal appeal, Comm'w of Pennsylvania v. Solomon, No. 1407 MDA 2018 (Mar. 16, 2021) doing on inversecondemnation.com?
The case involved a theft of collectible coins. The defendant was sentenced (inter alia) to pay restitution to the victim. The issue: how to value those coins.
After starting off with the timeless legal maxim "[a] penny saved is a penny earned," slip op. at 1, the majority concluded that the coins' value would not be calculated by their market value at the time of the crime, but by the victim's acquisition cost. The victim testified that it took him eight years to acquire the coins and over the years between acquisition and Solomon's theft, some of the coins increased in value while others declined. Original cost (from the victim's receipts): $86k. Current value (derived from looking for comps on Ebay): $58k. Trial judge: $86k is proper restitution.
Trial courts in Pennsylvania apparently are granted a lot of discretion when they sentence a miscreant. So the appeals court was operating under a fairly lenient standard of review, and concluded that the court below did not abuse that discretion when it applied the sentencing statute that calls for "full restitution" and "fullest compensation," and settled on the original cost. The point of forcing the voleur to pay restitution is twofold. First, to impress upon the offender the harm caused by her theft. Second, to try and make the victim whole. OK got it.
But two Justices dissented. They argued that "[i]t is well established that the purpose of restitution is to fully compensate a victim for the loss a defendant caused the victim." Dissent at 1. That phrasing reminded the dissenters of ... eminent domain:
I disagree, however, with using the purchase price of the coins as the appropriate methodology to determine the Victim’s loss. I would instead use the methodology that courts have been using to value property in eminent domain proceedings. A theft of property and an eminent domain proceeding both involve the involuntary transfer of property on a particular day.In an eminent domain proceeding, the court awards the property owner compensation for the involuntary loss of the property by determining the fair market value of the property on the date of the taking. The fair market value includes in its calculation a price that is high enough so that it is reasonable to assume that the seller would sell on that particular day. In other words, the price that a “willing seller” would pay for the property on a particular day.
Dissent at 2-3. Equating theft with eminent domain, the dissenters noted that here, the date of the theft was the date of the taking.
So there it is. Check it out. Even if you are not into criminal law, both opinions are a worthy read for eminent domain lawyers. And now we know firsthand that the world of criminal law and eminent domain are not completely separate. It's all part of it.
Comm'w of Pennsylvania v. Solomon, No. 1407 MDA 2018 (Pa. Super. App. Mar. 16, 2021)
