Pung v. Isabella County · ¶29

Pung also cites state-court cases in which courts ordered compensation based on the seized property’s fair market value. But those cases concerned governments that unnecessarily sold multiple discrete pieces of personal property. For example, in Cone v. Forest, 126 Mass. 97, 101 (1879), a sheriff sold nine of a taxpayer’s cows even though the sale proceeds from seven would have covered the tax debt. Because the cows were nine separate pieces of property “sold separately,” the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the sheriff committed the tort of conversion by selling the final two, and it ordered him to compensate the taxpayer based on the two cows’ fair market value. Ibid. Other state courts issued similar rulings in cases where the government seized “several distinct parcels or units of personal property.” Lane v. Roma Lumber Co., 234 Ala. 551, 552, 176 So. 283, 284…

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