Bowering v. Adams

TEMPLE, J.

—This action was commenced by thirty-eight plaintiffs against one hundred defendants to quiet the right and title of plaintiffs to certain water, to the extent of seventy inches, miners’ measure. Many of the defendants defaulted, and among them the two appellants. In the decree the court determined that seventy-three of the parties to the action were the owners of all the water arising upon the land described, or which could be thereafter developed from the same, in the order and to the several amounts named in the decree. Of these parties thirty-five were plaintiffs and thirty-eight were defendants, and the amount of water adjudged to belong to them is in the aggregate more than one hundred and twenty inches. The judgment-roll is not contained in the transcript, and we cannot tell whether, as to the defendants, the pleadings authorized a judgment in their favor. Plaintiffs in their complaint only asked that the defendants be enjoined from interfering with their claim to seventy inches flowing from the described tract, but admitted the right of the defendants to the surplus. Appellants contend that the decree is not sustained by the complaint in allowing a prior right to more than 'seventy inches of water, and in extending that priority to water which may hereafter be developed upon the described tract of land.

Motion is made by some of the respondents to dismiss the ap

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peal, on the ground that the notice of appeal was not served on all the adverse parties, to wit, upon fourteen defendants named in the notice who had heen duly served with summons and whose defaults had been entered, and against whom judgment had been rendered. The appellants admit the facts stated, except that they deny that the omitted parties are adverse parties and that their interests will, or can, be injuriously affected by the appeal.

In the complaint it is alleged that in 1887 the San Jose Banch Company acquired title to certain lands, and each of plaintiffs purchased from said company a specific portion thereof, and also certain water rights which are specifically described in the complaint, and which have become, and are, appurtenant to the respective tracts of land owned by plaintiffs in severalty. It was also averred that, in addition to the water rights conveyed to plaintiffs, the company undertook to convey to other parties a right to water from sources undefined, such other parties being the defendants, who assert some right to the water adverse to plaintiffs. “That the claims of said defendants are without any right whatever, except as to any surplus water there may be derived from said source over and above the .amount belonging to the plaintiffs, as above set forth.” Among other things, they demand that “all adverse claims of said defendants, or either of them, may be determined by a decree of ■this court, and that by said decree it be declared and adjudged that said plaintiffs are the owners of the right to use all the water flowing from the source above described, except the surplus, if any, over and above an amount equal to a constant flow of seventy inches under four-inch pressure, miners’ measurement,” et cetera. The effect of the decree has been partly stated.