Kirchnavy v. Levet

[587]

PEEK, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of defendants and from an order denying plaintiffs’ motion for a new trial in an action instituted for injunctive relief and damages.

The parties are adjoining landowners in Glenn County. Both had made changes in the topography of their respective parcels of land. Both also had constructed new and additional drainage facilities. Following the flooding of their land in the spring of 1950, plaintiffs filed this action to restrain defendants’ alleged obstruction of the channel of a natural water course, and prayed for damages for the loss of crops alleged to have been suffered by reason of defendants’ acts. The defendants' admitted that they had filled a particular crossing of the stream between their property and that of plaintiffs, but alleged that this was part of the straightening of the channel of said stream; that rather than causing the damage alleged, more adequate provision was thereby afforded for all natural surface drainage than before; that plaintiffs had suffered no damage from the admitted acts of defendants; and, that plaintiffs therefore were entitled to no mandatory relief.

The basic findings of the trial court and those upon which its conclusion was predicated were that at the time plaintiffs acquired their property there were two natural water courses which crossed their land; that by the leveling thereof and by the construction of an irrigation drainage ditch, waters from the two channels were thereby prevented from flowing in their natural state across plaintiffs’ property; that the amount and velocity of the water which in a state of nature would normally have drained from plaintiffs’ land into a natural water course along the boundary line separating plaintiffs’ property from that of defendants, was increased by the addition of the foreign waters contained in the irrigation ditch; that plaintiffs had allowed a culvert which defendants had installed to become so clogged as to materially affect its function, and these waters converged upon plaintiffs’ land inundating the same and causing the alleged damage. The court further found that acts of defendants had in no way contributed to plaintiffs’ damage.

Plaintiffs’ first contention is that the findings are not supported by the evidence. In support thereof they have set forth an exceedingly lengthy summary of the evidence in an endeavor to show that the damage suffered by them was occasioned by the acts of the defendants, Persuasive as such