Opinion
March 16, 1971
Cross appeals from a judgment of the Court of Claims, entered July 17, 1967, awarding damages for the appropriation of lands for highway purposes. Claimant was awarded $40,000, together with appropriate interest, for the taking of two parcels containing a total of 0.633 ± acre in connection with the construction of the Beacon-Newburgh bridge and Interstate Route 84. Prior to the appropriation the property consisted of 3.34 ± acres and was used as a garage and machine repair shop. None of the improvements were taken. It had a frontage on the easterly side of Route 9W of more than 500 feet which was reduced by the taking to about 300. An exit ramp from the bridge was built along the south of claimant's property which cut off a right-of-way (Beede Street) along the westerly and southerly bounds of the property. The court found that the reasonable market value of the property before taking was $145,600 and the after value was $105,600, and it awarded claimant $40,000, allocating $27,500 as direct damages and $12,500 as consequential for the cost of rerouting a creek and for loss of access to Beede Street at the rear of the property. On this record the award of consequential damages must be reduced by $7,500 because the access remaining after the taking is suitable for the highest and best use of the property (see Priestly v. State of New York, 23 N.Y.2d 152). Judgment modified, on the law and the facts, so as to reduce the award for direct and consequential damages to $32,500, with appropriate interest, and, as so modified, affirmed, without costs. Herlihy, P.J., Reynolds, Greenblott, Cooke and Sweeney, JJ., concur.