Hill v. Smith, 27 Cal. 476

Hill v. Smith

27 Cal. 476 | Cal. | 1865

By the Court, Sanderson, C. J.

The objection to the form in which many of the allegations contained in the complaint are denied is not a substantial one, in our judgment. Any form of denial which fairly meets and traverses the allegation is admissible. Suppose it is alleged in a complaint that the defendant at a certain time made and delivered to the plaintiff his certain promissory note, etc. Is not this allegation as directly and fairly traversed by saying: “ I did not at the time specified, or at any other time, make or deliver to the plaintiff the note described in the complaint,” as by saying: “I deny that on the day specified, or at any other time, I made or delivered to the plaintiff the note described in the complaint?” We think both serve equally well to form the issue. The former mode (which is the one adopted in this case) is less usual than the latter, but we are unable to perceive why it is not equally as good. It matters but little which form is adopted. If the denial is not evasive, but directly traverses the matter alleged, it' is good, without regard to the mere form in which it is expressed. The denials in this case do not appear to be evasive, but on the contrary, we think they fairly meet the issues tendered by the complaint.

*480We are also of the opinion that there is nothing in the point made by counsel for appellant to the effect that the matter set- out in the answer by way of excuse or justification is unsupported by the evidence. Assuming that the jury must have determined at the threshold of their investigations that the digging by the defendant of which the plaintiff complained was done by him in good faith, in pursuit of gold, we think the evidence upon that point, in the absence of any counter testimony, was sufficient to sustain their finding. All the witnesses, including the plaintiff’s, speak of the defendant’s “ claim,” and of his labor as “mining.” They also speak of his “sluice-boxes,” “wing-darn,” mode of “working claim” and “depositing tailings,” all of which are familiar terms in the vocabulary of the miner, and would hardly -have been employed by the witnesses had not the defendant been engaged in mining. From these circumstances, and in the absence of all counter testimony, the jury were justified in finding that the defendant was engaged in mining for gold. If they erred at all, it was not in so finding the fact, but in attaching to it, when found, too much importance, and regarding it as a justification on the part of the defendant, as they seem to have done, for whatever injuries he may have caused the plaintiff by his mining operations. And this brings us to the principal and most difficult question involved in this case.

After a careful examination of the evidence, we are impressed with the conviction that the plaintiff ought to have recovered. And we can only account for the verdict upon the hypothesis that the jury misapprehended the law of the case. The plaintiff’s prior right is unquestioned. That the defendant’s work caused large quantities of rubbish and sediment to be deposited in plaintiff’s reservoir and ditches, thereby lessening their capacity and entailing upon her additional expense in cleaning them out and maintaining their original capacity, hardly admits of debate. And it is very clear from the evidence that the value of the water for mining purposes, by reason of the mud and sediment mixed with it by the defendant’s mining operations was diminished by from' one *481fourth to one half. It appears that the plaintiff’s ditch supplied water to hydraulic claims which require water, as was clearly shown, in a purer state than claims worked by the sluicing process or method, in order to work them successfully. Where she had previously sold only sixty inches of water she "was compelled to sell a hundred and a hundred and twenty at the same price in consequence of the deterioration of its solvent capacity by reason of the sediment and mud from defendant’s claim. It further appears that on one or two occasions the miners, or some of them, who purchased water from the plaintiff, quit work entirely, because the water was so thick with sediment that it could not be used with any reasonable success in hydraulic mining. To say that such injuries are immaterial and therefore constitute no cause of action is to trifle with the prior rights of the plaintiff and misrepresent the law. There seems to have been a succesful effort made, on the part of the defense to prove that the defendant had studiously conducted his mining operations in such'a manner as to cause the least possible injury to the water rights of the plaintiff. It is probable that the jury supposed that, having thus worked, the defendant was not responsible for injuries unavoidably resulting from his work upon the vague notion that everybody has a right to mine"at such points as he may choose, provided he causes as little injury to others as is possible under all the circumstances. Such is the only theory upon which we can account for the verdict. Some stress was placed upon this testimony by the Judge, and while we think it was not intentional, the general and abstract terms in which the instructions of the Court were couched were, to a certain extent, as it appears to us, calculated to convey to the jury the idea that such was the law of the case. How cautiously or carefully the defendant worked was a matter of no consequence, for if his work in fact injured the plaintiff, he was none the less liable to an action. Moreover, the entire charge impliedly if not expressly proceeds upon and sanctions the idea that as between ditch owners and miners using the water of a stream in the mineral *482regions of the State for mining purposes, the law tolerates and winks at some uncertain and indeterminate amount of injury by the one to the prior rights of the other. This is due in a great measure doubtless to the notion, which has become quite prevalent, that the rules of the common law touching water rights have been materially modified in this State upon the theory that they were inapplicable to the conditions found to exist here, and therefore inadequate to a just and fair determination of controversies touching such rights. This notion is without any substantial foundation. The reasons which constitute the groundwork of the common law upon this subject remain undisturbed. The conditions to which we are called upon to apply them are changed, and not the rules themselves. The maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum. non Jcedas, upon which they are grounded, has lost none of its governing force; on the contrary it remains now, and in the mining regions of this State, as operative a test of the lawful use of water as at any time in the past, or in any other country. When the law declares that a riparian proprietor is entitled to have the water of a stream flow in its natural channel—libi currere solebat—without diminution or alteration, it does so because its flow imparts fertility to his land, and because water in its pure state is indispensable for domestic uses. But this rule is not applicable to miners and ditch owners, simply because the conditions upon which it is founded do not exist in their case. They seek the water for a particular purpose, which is not only compatible with its diversion from its natural channel, but more frequently necessitates such diversion, and moreover does not require the water in a pure state in order to insure its reasonable and beneficial use. Yet the maxim above mentioned upon which the rule is founded is equally as applicable to the ditch owner and to the miner as to the riparian proprietor, and neither can so use the water as to injure or prejudice the prior rights to a like use by the other. This maxim is one which every riparian proprietor is bound to respect, and it is no less obligatory upon those who use and divert water for mining purposes. So that in all con*483troversies like the present the question to be determined after all is the same as that presented by a like controversy between riparian proprietors, to wit: has the plaintiff’s use and enjoyment of the water for the pmposes for which he claims its me been impaired by the acts of the defendant ? This is purely a question of fact for the jury, and all the law applicable to it is found, as stated by the learned counsel for appellants in the case of the Phoenix Water Company v. Fletcher, 23 Cal. 483, embraced in the three following maxims: Qui prior est in tempore, potior est in jure; Ubi jus, ibi remedium; Sic utere tuo ut alienum non Icedas, and beyond these principles they do not require to be instructed. What diminution in quantity or what deterioration in quality will injuriously affect the use of the water by the plaintiff may be safely left to the determination of the jury, guided only by the foregoing maxims. It may be that a slight diminution or deterioration will impair his use of the water, and it may be that such use would not be impaired by a very considerable reduction in quantity or quality. The question must be determined in view of the use to which the water is applied and the other circumstances developed by the testimony.

Judgment reversed and new trial ordered.