Case ID: wis_192/html/0458-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Vinje, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

In re Heideman Drainage District: Dodge County Farm Drainage Board, Appellant, vs. Specht and others, Respondents.
    
      January 10
    
    April 5, 1927.
    
    
      Drains: Improvements costing more than benefits received: Appeal: Absence of exceptions to findings of fact.
    
    1. Findings of fact of the trial court will be treated as verities on appeal in the absence of exceptions filed to them. p. 459.
    2. In view of sec. 88.08, Stats., the deepening and widening of a drainage ditch was not permissible where no assessment of benefits had ever been made to the owners of the land affected and the cost of the proposed work would have exceeded all benefits theretofore received or thereafter to be received by the landowners, p. 459.
    Appeal from a judgment of the circuit court for Dodge county: C. M. Davison; Circuit Judge.
    
      Affirmed.
    
    Proceedings originally by H. Heideman to remove a bridge over a drainage ditch, and later by the Dodge County Farm Drainage Board to widen and deepen the ditch.
    The court found among other facts these: The bridge was removed before the Dodge County Farm Drainage Board took jurisdiction of the matter. No proper petition was ever filed by or with the said Dodge County Farm 
      
      Drainage Board for the alteration, widening, or deepening of the ditch. No assessments of benefits to the affected landowners has ever been made, and the cost of the proposed widening or deepening of the ditch exceeds the total benefits that the landowners have received or will receive from the original ditch as widened or deepened. The proceedings were dismissed and the Drainage Board appealed.
    The cause was submitted for the appellant on the briefs of L. S. Keeley, attorney, and Husting & Rusting, of counsel, all of Mayville, and for the respondents on those of James F. Malone of Beaver Dam.
   The following opinion was filed February 8, 1927:

Vinje, C. J.

No exceptions were filed to the findings of fact, so we can treat them as verities. Will of Britt, 174 Wis. 145, 182 N. W. 738. We have, however, looked into the evidence sufficiently to satisfy us that it sustains the above recited findings of the court.

The fact that at no time has there ever been an assessment of benefits made to the owners of land affected bars further expenditure of money for an alteration more costly than the digging of the original ditch, as well as the fact that the cost of the proposed work will exceed the benefits heretofore received or hereafter to be received by the landowners. Sec. 88.08, Stats.; In re Dancy Drainage Dist. 190 Wis. 327, 208 N. W. 479.

By the Court. — Judgment affirmed.

A motion for a rehearing was denied, with $25 costs, on April 5, 1927.