Shaw v. Town of Sebastopol (1911) · DecisionDepot

Shaw v. Town of Sebastopol

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Supreme Court Apr 4, 1911 No. S.F. No. 5394.Published

Before: Sloss

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Holding. The court held that a municipality is not liable for surface water drainage if the improvements to a public road do not increase the volume of water discharged onto private property beyond its natural flow. Furthermore, a landowner cannot acquire a prescriptive right to divert natural surface water onto a public road.

Issues

Whether the municipal improvements to a public road caused an unlawful increase in the volume of surface water discharged onto the plaintiff's land.
Whether a landowner can acquire a prescriptive right to divert natural surface water from their property onto a public road.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“A municipal corporation has no more right than has an individual to collect surface water and precipitate it upon private premises to the injury of the owner.”

“The court has found that the culvert takes no more water than would naturally cross the road at the point where the culvert is situated”

“It is not claimed, nor can it be, that the plaintiff has acquired by prescription any right to divert from her land water which would naturally flow there, and to discharge it upon the public road.”

Synopsis

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

SLOSS, J.

The town of Sebastopol, one of the defendants herein, was incorporated as a town of the sixth class in 1902. One of its streets is Petaluma Avenue, which runs southerly from the center of the town to the corporate limits and then continues as a county road in a general southerly direction to the city of Petaluma. Prior to the incorporation of Sebas

[624]

topol, Petaluma Avenue had existed as “Petaluma road” for a period of many years.

The plaintiff is the owner of a tract of land lying on the easterly line of Petaluma Avenue and extending along said avenue, within the town limits, for about eight hundred feet northerly from the southerly boundary of the city. Shortly prior to the commencement of this action Petaluma Avenue was improved by a macadam pavement. The plaintiff, contending that the effect of this work, if carried to completion according to the plans made therefor, would cause a large quantity of surface waters to be collected and discharged upon her land, brought this action against the town, its trustees and the contractor who had charge of the work, to obtain an injunction restraining the defendants from maintaining a culvert constructed across the road, or from filling up or closing a trench and conduit by means of which the plaintiff had theretofore diverted water from her land.

The defendants had judgment and from this judgment, as well as from an order denying a motion for new trial, the plaintiff appeals.

There is no substantial difference between the parties regarding the law governing the case. It is the well-settled law of this state that the owner of land over which surface water is accustomed to flow may not obstruct such flow to the injury of the owner of the land from which it comes, and that the owner of the upper land has not the right to change the flow of the water to the injury of the lower owner.

(Ogburn

Connor,

46 Cal. 346, [13 Am. Rep. 213];

Cushing

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the volume of water discharged through this culvert is considerably in excess of the flow that naturally came there before the grading or paving was undertaken. But as against this, there is evidence which would support the contrary conclusion. This evidence was evidently believed by the trial court, and with its conclusion in determining the conflict presented to it we cannot interfere. For example, one of the witnesses for defendant testified that there is no more water now coming through the culvert than there ever was, and explained tliis by the further statement that Green’s Hill, which lies to the south of Sebastopol and forms a part of the watershed from which the water ran down upon the road, had now, by grading, been brought “nearer to town,” so that the amount of water flowing from the northerly side of said hill was less than it had formerly been. It was shown that the trend of all the land to the west of the road was towards the intake end of the culvert and that, in the absence of any improvement, the great bulk of the water would cross at this place and run through plaintiff’s land. There was, also, testimony to the effect that all the culverts and other waterways crossing the street at points south of the culvert of which plaintiff complains had naturally filled with sand and had carried no water for twenty-five years or more, and that during all this time the culvert in question had afforded the only method for carrying water from the west to the east side of the road. All of this testimony, taken together, fully warranted the finding that the work done on the road had not materially increased the flow of water through the culvert. If this be so, the plaintiff is really seeking to divert from her land the waters which would naturally flow thereon and turn them through an artificial channel back upon the road at a point north of her premises. As we have seen, she could not, by so diverting the water for any length of time, gain the right to continue to do so.

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Synopsis

SLOSS, J.

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