Western Union Tel. Co. v. Modesto Irrigation Co.

The plaintiff is a well-known corporation, organized under the laws of the state of New York, engaged in the business of telegraphy, having certain franchises, rights, and privileges granted by the government of the United States, and having many telegraph lines in California and in other parts of the United States and adjoining countries. The defendant, the Modesto Irrigation Company, is an irrigation district organized in July, 1887, under an act of the legislature of this state providing for the organization of irrigation districts, approved March 7, 1887, (Stats. 1887, p. 29,) and generally known as the Wright Act, and it has ever since continued its existence as such district under said acts *Page 663 and acts amendatory thereof and supplemental thereto. The other defendants are directors of said irrigation district. The plaintiff is, and at the times mentioned in the complaint was, the owner of certain property consisting of poles, wires, and other appliances constituting nine and one half miles of one of its telegraph lines which runs over a right of way of a certain railroad corporation known as the Southern Pacific Company within the boundaries of the said Modesto Irrigation District. The plaintiff put up its said nine and one half miles of poles, wires, etc., under a written contract with the said railroad which expressly declared that the poles, wires, etc., constituting said nine and one half miles of telegraph line, "shall be and remain the personal property of said plaintiff." In 1904 the defendants caused the said nine and one half miles of poles, etc., to be assessed at the value of eleven hundred dollars as property taxable for the purpose of raising revenue for said irrigation district. Thereupon the plaintiff brought this suit to have determined the validity of said assessment — as it was authorized to do by section 69 of an act to provide for the organization of irrigation districts, approved March 31, 1897, (Stats. 1897, p. 276,) and generally known as the Bridgford Act. The case was tried without a jury and upon a stipulated state of facts, and the court rendered judgment for defendants. From this judgment plaintiff appeals. There is no contest as to the facts in the case, which are substantially as above stated; the only question is whether the said property of plaintiff is legally assessable and taxable by the irrigation district.

The main purpose of the statutes providing for irrigation districts is to enable owners of land that may be made more productive of vegetable growth by irrigation, and which are "susceptible of irrigation from a common source," to organize so as to more effectually accomplish such irrigation; and there is, therefore, some room for the alleged absurdity of irrigating the poles and wires of a telegraph line. But we will assume that such property is within the taxing power of the district if the letter of the law necessarily includes it.