§ 8.01-167.How damages of plaintiff assessed.

Section 8.01-167 tells the jury what to measure once a betterment claim is underway, whether the case proceeds under this article or under Article 14’s general procedure for recovering land. The jury’s first job is to set the annual value of the premises for the whole period the defendant held them — what rent the land would have commanded, treated as the plaintiff’s loss for being kept out of possession.

That annual-value figure excludes one thing: the added value the defendant’s own improvements contributed to the use of the land. A defendant who built a barn or cleared a field should not be charged rent on the increased usefulness that labor created; the annual value the jury assesses is the value of the bare premises as they would have rented absent those improvements.

The jury must also account for waste or other injury the defendant did to the property while in possession — damage that goes beyond ordinary use and diminishes what the plaintiff eventually gets back. Section 8.01-169 then picks up the companion calculation, valuing the improvements themselves.