Annual Report of the Court of Claims of the State of New York (Volume 17)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918. Excerpt: ... ADIRONDACK FOREST PRESERVE--Continued. Page, hardwood, for the sum of $70,000, but at the time of the appropriation Gaffney had not served notice on the claimant of his acceptance of the offer. After pointing out that the parties had by stipulation relieved the Court from determining from the testimony of witnesses certain of the elements entering into market value, the Court held that, in arriving at the question of the value of the land appropriated, it would take into consideration, first, land with merchantable hardwood timber; second, the balance of the appropriated parcel without such timber; third, the value of the pulpwood; fourth, the value of the softwood timber; fifth, the value of the hemlock bark. These values were found to aggregate $175,743.27. as being the amount which a willing buyer and a willing seller would have agreed to as the sum to be paid for the appropriated lands as taken by the State. Market value represents what a willing buyer would pay for property to a willing seller. It is not ascertained by measuring what profits could be derived from the property based on what the products of the property would sell for, less the cost of placing such products on the market, be it stone, gravel or wood, or anything else of such a nature that its quantity could be fairly estimated. Such a method does not take into consideration all the vicissitudes 'which must be met every day in a commercial enterprise of that character and the courts have accordingly condemned that method of determining market value. The claimant had, after the taking of this land, 5,700 acres in Lewis county, of which 3,700 acres contained a stand of 7,500,000 feet of merchantable hardwood timber and about 4.000 cords of pulpwood. The appropriation of the adjacent land ...