Excerpt from In the District Court of the United States for the Northern District of California, Vol. 2: Second Division, Spring Valley Water Company, Complainant, Vs. City and County of San Francisco, Et Al., Defendants, Oral Argument of Edward J. McCutchen, Warren Olney, Jr., And A. Crawford Greene, for Complainant, Before Honorable H. M. Wright Mr. Olney: Your Honor, the subject I have to discuss is the market value of the lands composing the reservoir sites of the Spring Valley W'ater Company. It is manifestly not easy, even in the simplest case, to asoer tain with really positive certainty what is the market value of anything which is not made up of homogeneous units or quantities which are the subject of daily bargaining and sale. We can ascertain very certainly the market value of a certain lot of Wheat on a certain day, because it is homogeneous and is the subject of daily bargaining and sale. On the other hand, we cannot ascertain with any such certainty and precision the market value of a certain horse on a certain day, and to the extent to which the horse has strong individual traits or qualities which distinguish it from other horses and which add to its value, the difficulty of accurate appraisement is increased. The market value of an ordinary horse, of average age and size, will be between certain fairly well ascertainable limits, which are the going prices for such horses. The case, however, of a horse that has peculiarly valuable traits, such as great speed, which distinguish it from other horses, is one where it is much more difficult to fix the real market value, and the difficulty in creases with the extent to which such a horse is distinguished from other horses. It is perfectly plain that its market value is very much greater than that of an ordinary horse, but just what that market value is it is difficult to say. A Maud S has a market value many times greater than that of an ordinary dray horse, but the market value of the latter can be much more easily ascertained. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.