236
Opinion of the Court
rather than the government's gain. This conclusion is supported by consistent and unambiguous holdings in our cases.
Most frequently cited is Justice Holmes' characteristically terse statement that "the question is what has the owner lost, not what has the taker gained." Boston Chamber of Commerce v. Boston, 217 U. S. 189, 195 (1910). Also directly in point is Justice Brandeis' explanation of why a mere technical taking does not give rise to an obligation to pay compensation:
"We have no occasion to determine whether in law the President took possession and assumed control of the Marion & Rye Valley Railway. For even if there was technically a taking, the judgment for defendant was right. Nothing was recoverable as just compensation, because nothing of value was taken from the company; and it was not subjected by the Government to pecuniary loss." Marion & Rye Valley R. Co. v. United States, 270 U. S. 280, 282 (1926).
A few years later we again noted that the private party "is entitled to be put in as good a position pecuniarily as if his property had not been taken. He must be made whole but is not entitled to more." Olson v. United States, 292 U. S. 246, 255 (1934).
In Kimball Laundry Co. v. United States, 338 U. S. 1 (1949), although there was disagreement within the Court concerning the proper measure of the owner's loss when a leasehold interest was condemned, it was common ground that the government should pay "not for what it gets but for what the owner loses." Id., at 23 (Douglas, J., dissenting). Moreover, in his opinion for the majority, Justice Frankfurter made it clear that, given "the liability of all property to condemnation for the common good," an owner's nonpecuniary losses attributable to "his unique need for property or idiosyncratic attachment to it, like loss due to an exercise of
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