United States v. 75.13 Acres of Land

Robert Rice and Dennis King appeal from the district court's1 judgment awarding them $65,000 and $37,000 respectively for property taken by the United States in 1978.2 The court based its awards upon the recommendations of the condemnation commission it established pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 71A(h) to determine just compensation for land the government condemned for the Army's Saylorville Lake flood control project near Des Moines, Iowa. We affirm. Rice and King (hereafter the landowners) challenge the district court's judgment and seek a new trial on several grounds. They initially raise a series of objections relating to the district court's instructions to the condemnation commission. The landowners first contend that the district court's Instruction 63 was erroneous because it gave undue emphasis to evidence of comparable sales and failed to direct the jury that ""the determination of value is not limited to that [comparable sales] method."" We disagree.