1987.
The final ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court on those damages to Boston's Trinity Church resulting from the construction of the nearby 62-story John Hancock Tower awards some $4.2 million to the plaintiff.
Due to the 11-year period of the suit, accrued interest could bring the final figure to $11.6 million.
The award is based on a new method of calculating damages that could become a presedent. The method, developed by consulting engineer Maurice Reidy, produces a value that is a percentage of what it would cost to take the entire 100 years old structure down and rebuild it. The revolutionary nature of the method is part of the cause for the long term of the suit, and it was finally upheld as appropriate by the courts in the case of nonprofit institutions for which diminution of fair-market value could not be a test.
But another reason for the success of the method in this case was the exceptional extent of the damage. The church is described as both Henry Hobson Richardson's "masterpiece" and the first building in the U.S. to achieve an integral marriage of art and architecture through Richardson's collaboration with artist John LeFarge, who produced the remarkable murals and stained glass windows.
The damage has not gone so far as to threaten collapse, but is said to have produced cracks in the massive masonry walls up to three inches in width, a five-inch list in the central tower, and a lateral migration of that part of the building nearest the new excavation caused by the movement of the wood pillings in the unstable landfill on which both the new and old buildings sit.