46 Mo. 161 | Mo. | 1870
delivered the' opinion of the court.
Defendants excavated a cellar up to the back lino of plaintiff’s lot. Less than four foot from this line was a row of brick privies for the accommodation of the tenement houses belonging to the plaintiff, and under the privies and parallel to the edge of the cellar ran a brick sewer communicating with the large sewer in the street. A f<^w days after the cellar was . dug, the bank caved in, the sewer burst, and the water, etc., ran into the cellar. The case was tried on appeal from the judgment of a justice of the peace, and was submitted to the court sitting as a jury, the ■plaintiff claiming that the sliding in of the bank and bursting of the sewer was caused by the excavation and removing of the support to which the plaintiff’s lot was entitled; and the defendants, on the other hand, claiming that it was the result of the. weight of the privies and the obstructions in the sewer which dammed up the water and caused the sewer to burst.
The plaintiff had'a right to a support from the adjoining soil for his land in its natural state, and if the slide was not caused by the pressure of his buildings or by his sewer, and if tlie slide caused the bursting of the sewer, he is entitled to recover. The opinion of Judge Leonard in Charless v. Rankin, 22 Mo. 566,
The judgment of the Circuit Court must therefore be affirmed.