Spring Valley Water Works v. San Francisco

Crocker, J. delivered the opinion of the Court—Cope, C. J. and Norton, J. concurring. The plaintiffs are a corporation organized for the purpose of introducing pure fresh water into the City of San Francisco, and they instituted this special proceeding for the purpose of condemning a certain tract of land to the uses of the company, before the County Judge of the City and County of San Francisco. The parties interested in the property appeared, and on the twelfth day of August, 1862, the County Judge appointed commissioners to report the compensation to which the owners were entitled. The commissioners reported that the owners were entitled to the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, which was paid to the County Clerk, and the County Judge rendered a decree adjudicating the premises to the plaintiffs. The defendants moved to set aside the report, and for a new trial, which was denied, and thereupon they appealed to this Court.

The plaintiffs were organized "under and in pursuance of an Act entitled “An Act for the Incorporation of Water Companies,” approved April 22d, 1858 (Stat. 1858, 218), by Sec. 2 of which it is provided that the mode of proceeding for the appropriation of lands shall be the same as prescribed in Secs. 27-29 of the Act providing for the incorporation of Railroad Companies, passed April 22d, 1853, except that such proceedings shall be had before the County Judge of the county where the lands are situated. In 1861 (Stat. 1861, 228), this Sec. 2 was amended, by providing that, where the County Judge was interested, the proceedings should be before the District Judge. Afterwards, on the twentieth day of May, 1861, an entirely new act was passed for the incorporation of railroad companies, not foEowing the order or number of the sections of the Act of 1853, but changing them throughout, and also repealing the Act of 1853.

The plaintiffs in these proceedings foEowed the provisions of Secs. 27-29 of the Act of 1853, instead of the revised Act of 1861, and this, it is insisted, was erroneous, and it is claimed that the latter act should have eontroEed the proceedings. If the new railroad law of 1861 had been merely amendatory of the Act of 1853, preserving the sections with their numbers, there would have [439]been some force in the position taken by the defendants. But when we come to examine the revised law of 1861, we find the sections entirely changed, and the subject matter of these three sections of the Act of 1853 is now found in Secs. 17, and 24 to 39 inclusive, in the Act of 1861. If the plaintiffs’ proceeding is to be governed by Secs. 27-29 of the Act of 1861, they will be found entirely insufficient, without the use of other sections, to regulate the action of the officers having jurisdiction of the matter. We do not see how the Act of 1858 can be extended or construed to include these additional sections, or indeed be held to apply in any way to a law not then enacted. The Act of 1858 substantially incorporated these three sections of the Railroad Law of 1853 within its provisions, and the repealing clause of the Act of 1861 repealed the Act of 1853 so far as it applied to railroad companies, but substantially left these three sections in force, so far as they were made part of the law relating to water companies. We see no other mode of carrying out the evident intention of the Legislature. It would seem that if it had been their intention that water companies should be governed by the provisions of the new railroad law, they would have so expressed it, especially as at the same session they amended the section relating to this subject in the water companies’ act. We hold, therefore, that the proceedings were properly conducted in accordance with the provisions of these three sections of the Act of 1853.