Case ID: us_4/html/0127-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Anonymous. 
    
    
      Conditional verdict.
    
    Case for obstructing a water-course, by which the plaintiffs meadow was watered. Plaintiff having proved his right to the course, his counsel executed and filed a writing, by which they bound him to release any damages, that the jury might give, if defendant should execute a deed, securing to plaintiff the enjoyment of the water, and the court advised the jury, on this condition, to find the full value of the meadow in damages.
    This was an action on the case for obstructing a water-course, by which the plaintiff’s meadow was watered. On the trial, it appeared, that the defendant had purchased a mill, with notice that the vendor had before sold the meadow in question to the plaintiff, covenanting that the plaintiff might use the water, over and above what was necessary for the mill. The defendant obstructed the water-course ; and it seemed to have been his object, by so doing, to compel the plaintiff to sell the meadow to him.
    
      
       Decided before Yeates and Smith, Justices, at Northampton nisi prius, in October 1793. In delivering the charge to the jury, Mr. Justice Yeates referred to a similar case, before the Chief Justice and himself, in which the court had given, and the jury had adopted, the same advice.
    
    
      
       The name of this case is Walker v. Butz, 1 Yeates 574, which is a better report.
    
   On these facts, The Court recommended (with the concurrence of the counsel on both sides) that the defendant should do *an act of justice in securing to the plaintiff, by deed, the enjoyment of the water-course; but he obstinately rejected the proposition. The plaintiff’s counsel, thereupon, executed and filed a writing, by which they bound their client to release any damages that the jury might give, in case the defendant should execute such a deed as the court had proposed ; and the court advised the jury, on this condition, to find the full value of the meadow in damages ; which was, accordingly, done.

Sitgreaves and Thomas, for the plaintiff. Ingersoll and Clymer, for the defendant. 
      
      
         In the case of Clyde v. Clyde, 1 Yeates 92, which was a special action of assumpsit for a privilege of a water-course through the lands of the defendant, large damages were given by the jury, under the direction of the court, to compel the defendant to do justice. See, on the subject of conditional verdicts, Decamp v. Feay, 5 S. & R. 323; Coolbaugh v. Pierce, 8 Id. 418.
      
     
      
       And see 1 Tr. & H. Pr. § 53, and notes.