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Boudreaux v. State6/10/2005
e partnership decided to sell the farm in March 1994 for $58,000.00. At trial, an accountant for the partnership testified that the fair market value of the real estate at the time of the flood was $276,515.00.
Generally, three approaches have been followed by the Louisiana courts in arriving at the amount of damages to property: (1) the cost of restoration if the thing damaged can be adequately repaired; (2) the difference in value prior to and following the damage; or (3) the cost of replacement new, less reasonable depreciation, if the value before and after the damage cannot be reasonably determined, or if the cost of the repairs exceeds the value of the thing damaged. Corbello v. Iowa Production, 02-0826, pp. 7-8 (La.2/25/03), 850 So.2d 686, 694. Apparently, the trial court, in awarding the partnership $218,515.00, chose to take the difference in the value of the property prior to and following the flood. We find no error in this calculation and reject the State's arguments in regard to this business.
Next, the State contends that the trial court's award to Hydes Slaughterhouse was improper because it awarded damages for improvements made to the property following the flood. By this contention, the State refers to the effluent (oxidation) ponds and new cooler (freezer) built by the owners of Hydes Slaughterhouse several years after the flood. However, Bobby Hyde, the controlling owner of the slaughterhouse, testified that following the flood, attempts were made to simply repair the damage done to the meat cooler and the effluent ponds, but after repeated repairs proved unsuccessful, the company had no choice but to replace the cooler and construct new effluent ponds. Mr. Hyde testified that prior to the flood, the discharge processed through the existing effluent ponds were never found to be in violation of any environmental quality standards; however, in the time period following the flood up to the construction of the new effluent ponds, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) constantly found the discharge to be in violation of quality standards to the extent that the DEQ eventually required the slaughterhouse to construct new effluent ponds.
Mr. Hyde also testified regarding the circumstances leading up to the eventual replacement of the cooler. As he related:
The water got into that and went into the walls and got under the freezer. And the freezer, then, as it got more and more of it, condensation just started building up in it. And then, when ice, you start getting more, your ice starts, when it starts expanding, it got underneath it.... And it moved the floor, this big cement floor with all the meat in there. It kept moving up to an end. And then, when it moved it up, it started cracking; that made it worse. And then, it just, from then on, it finally destroyed that big freezer, then we had to build another--get another freezer built.
From this testimony, it is clear that the freezer did not just simply stop working because it was old, but water from the flood that seeped into the freezer caused it to stop working. We thus conclude that the trial court did not err in awarding Hydes Slaughterhouse damages for the construction of the effluent ponds and the cooler.
The last two business loss awards that the State objects to are those made to Sandra Kilburn Evans and Edward Cosgrove. At the time of the flood, Mrs. Evans and her now deceased ex-spouse, Danny Kilburn, ran a franchise of the Geodesic Dome Company whereby they constructed and sold dome structures. Mrs. Evans testified that they lost all of their inventory and tools in the flood, and without insurance, they were not financially able to restart the business
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