In Redevelopment Agency v. First Christian Church (1983) 140 Cal. App. 3d 690, the jury awarded the owner of condemned church property over $ 3 million. The main issue at trial was the value to be assigned to the church building, given the special nature of its use. (Id. at p. 696.) The redevelopment agency sought to show that the "market value of the church was the value of the land on which it stood." (Id. at p. 698.) When the court refused to allow the redevelopment agency's expert to testify, based on sales of four other churches, that the church building should be depreciated by 80 to 100 percent, the agency's expert "estimated the present cost of replacing the building and depreciated that figure by 75 percent." (Id. at p. 696.) On appeal, the redevelopment agency contended among other things that its expert should have been able to testify, based on the four excluded church sales, to a depreciation figure of 80 to 100 percent. The redevelopment agency argued that the sales, while admittedly not comparable, were admissible to show that the market value of the church was simply the value of the land on which it stood. The agency's expert was to "testify that as a basis for his opinion he made a 'market survey' . . . and concluded that in each instance, when compared to sales of raw land in the surrounding vicinity, the price paid for the church property was the same as would be paid for the equivalent amount of unimproved land. From this he extrapolated that the church buildings had been depreciated 100 percent or 'at least 80% in all cases studied.'" (Id. at p. 699.) The appellate court in First Christian upheld the exclusion of the agency's expert's market survey testimony. First, the court noted, there was no authority to support "the use of a sale price of other property to establish the percentage of depreciation of the property being condemned." (First Christian, supra, 140 Cal. App. 3d at p. 699.) Second, the court stated that "sales of noncomparable property are irrelevant to the value of the property being condemned. Plaintiff's attempt to bring evidence of admittedly noncomparable sales before the jury involved the expert appraiser in the process of expressing an opinion on the apportionment of the sales price of the other property between land and improvement. This would have run afoul of Evidence Code section 822, subdivision (a)(4) . . . ." (Ibid.) Third, the appellate court held that "the trial court was well within its discretion under Evidence Code section 352 in refusing to admit the evidence." (Ibid.) Finally, the court held that the agency "suffered no prejudice in any event" because its expert was able to present similar evidence and testify to an overall depreciation of 75 percent. (Id. at p. 700.)