Miller & Lux, Inc. v. San Joaquin Light & Power Corp.

LAMBERT, J.,

pro tem.

This is an appeal by the defendant from a judgment granting a permanent injunction in favor of the plaintiff and intervener. The action was brought by plaintiff and respondent to enforce by injunction the terms of a contract executed some twenty years previously by plaintiff and respondent and the predecessors in interest of appellant and of intervener and respondent, and to quiet the title of respondents to the waters of the San Joaquin River and some of its tributaries, particularly the North Fork thereof, as against the appellant. The contract which involved the relative rights of the parties to the waters of the San Joaquin River was executed on the fourteenth day of June, 1909, between Miller & Lux, Incorporated, Las Animas and San Joaquin Land Company, Incorporated (a predecessor in interest of respondent Miller & Lux, Incorporated), California Pastoral & Agricultural Company, Limited, a corporation, predecessor in interest of intervener and respondent, Chowehilla Farms, Incorporated, a corporation, as parties of the first part, and San Joaquin Light and Power Company, a corporation, a predecessor in interest of appellant, as party of the second part. In its amended complaint respondent Miller & Lux, Incorporated, asks for an injunction restraining and preventing the appellant from impounding and diverting any of the waters of the San Joaquin River at any time or at any stage, or in any amount different from the times, amounts and stages specified in the agreement. The amended complaint further asks that it be adjudged and decreed that respondent Miller & Lux, Incorporated, is entitled to have all waters of

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the river, other than those which appellant could store under the agreement, flow to and by plaintiff’s land without interruption or interference by appellant. Chowchilla Farms, Incorporated, a corporation, successor in interest of California Pastoral & Agricultural Company, Limited, intervened in the action on behalf of plaintiff. The first amended complaint of respondent Miller & Lux, Incorporated, upon which the judgment rests, after alleging the corporate capacities of respondent Miller & Lux, and appellant, alleges in paragraph 3, the legal effect of the agreement heretofore mentioned, to be adverted to later in this opinion, as follows:

“That on the 14th day of June, 1909, plaintiff, Las Animas and San Joaquin Land Company, Incorporated, a corporation, and California Pastoral & Agricultural Company, Limited, a corporation, therein denominated the Parties of the First Part, entered into an agreement with Defendant wherein it was recited that plaintiff was the owner of a large acreage of land in the Counties of Fresno, Madera, Merced and Stanislaus, through which said land runs the main channels of the San Joaquin River, and which said land is on natural channels, branches and sloughs which head on said river Upon said land of plaintiff, and run through said land and come back to the main channel or channels of said river, and the greater portion of said land borders on the main channels of said river, and said other channels, branches and sloughs, and, is riparian to said river; and said agreement further recited that plaintiff has diverted and appropriated waters of said river, channels, branches and sloughs for the purpose of irrigating plaintiff’s said lands, and for watering stock and for domestic and other beneficial purposes, and has used all of the water so diverted for said purposes.