132 Mo. App. 92 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1908
(after stating the facts). —
Plaintiff offered evidence tending to show that he could not protect himself from the water caused to be backed upon his land by the levee. Defendant offered evidence tending to show that he could, at an expense of from $15 to $30, have drained the back water off
Instruction number 8 instructed the jury as follows, to which defendant saved an exception:
“The court instructs the jury that even though you find from the evidence in the cause that the waters which collected on plaintiff’s land west of and adjacent to the levee in controversy, if any, were surface waters, and even though you should further find that there was and is no natural watercourse extending through the low lands on plaintiff’s tract across the division line between plaintiff’s said tract and defendants’ lands into defendants’ lands, still if you further find that said levee caused the waters during 1902 and 1903 to accumulate on plaintiff’s land and damage his crops for said years, then your verdict must be for the plaintiff, if you further find that plaintiff could not have, at a reasonable cost, drained said waters off from such overflowed area,”
While the owner of land may improve the same by obstructing or diverting surface water, he may not do so in a reckless manner, resulting in injury to another. [Cox v. Railroad, 174 Mo. 588, 74 S. W. 854; Webb v. Carter, 121 Mr. App. 1. c. 154.] The instruction, however, does not predicate plaintiff’s right to recover on the theory that defendants recklessly obstructed the surface water, resulting in injury to plaintiff, but authorizes a recovery if defendants obstructed it at all, however careful he may have been in doing so. In McCormick v. Railroad, 57 Mo. 1. c. 437, the Supreme Court said: “The general rule, however, is that
The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.