ect incremental costs by positing that opportunity costs are zero. In Loretto V. Teleprompter Manhattan CATV Corp., for example, the State of New York replaced a privately negotiated system, in which cable companies that wished to lay cable television wires across a given apartment building would pay the building owner a standard rate of five percent of the revenue realized from that building, with a regulatory regime that accorded building owners a grand total of one dollar in compensation. 18 In a decision ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that this nominal compensation represented a fair return to the building owner, given that the equipment in question occupied "an area of the building for which she does claim have any other use. "19 According to the court, then, the opportunity cost of occupying property not currently employed for other purposes was, in effect, zero. The concurring opinion sounded a similar note when it offered that "if the 458 U.S. 419, 423-25 (1982). The U.S. Supreme Court's Loretto opinion is analyzed in greater detail in Chapter 7. 423 N.E.2d 320,333 (N.Y. 1981), rev'd, 458 U.S. 419, 421 (1982). Networks in Telecommunications installation of a cable substantially interfere [d] with the owner's present or future use of the building, we must presume that the [State] would award reasonable compensation for the taking pursuant to its regulations."20 The point is made even more dramatically in the Eleventh Circuit's decision in Alabama Power Co. V. FCC, sustaining the compensation regime established under the Pole Attachments Act. In that case, the court acknowledged the impor- tance of according the owners of networks of utility poles the fair market value of access to their poles, which included the pole owner's opportunity costs. The court nonetheless sustained a regime that based rates solely on direct incremental costs on the ground that one person's use of the network does not necessarily preclude another person's use. Thus, SO long as 