Case Title: Villeneuve v. Powers

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 1991-12-01T00:00:00Z

Document:
NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P.
 40 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
 Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
 Court, 111 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 of any errors in order
 that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                 No. 91-389


 Richard Villeneuve                           Supreme Court
 and Ardelle Villeneuve
                                              On Appeal from
      v.                                      Chittenden Superior Court

 Nathan Powers                                December Term, 1991
 and Marjory Powers



 Matthew I. Katz, J.

 David C. Drew and Veronica Ciambra, Lyndonville, for plaintiffs-appellants

 L. Randolph Amis of Wiener & Amis, P.C., Burlington, for defendants-
   appellees



 PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Gibson, Dooley, Morse and Johnson, JJ.



      GIBSON, J.   Plaintiffs brought an action seeking damages for
 defendants' failure to remove a beaver dam on their adjoining property in
 Underhill.  The trial court dismissed the action.  We reverse and remand.
      Plaintiffs' property is located upstream from defendants' property.  A
 stream running through both properties had been blocked by a beaver dam
 located on defendants' property, and plaintiffs claimed that the dam caused
 the stream level to rise and flood, causing damage to their property.
 Plaintiffs requested that defendants remove the dam or allow plaintiffs to
 do so, but the requests were refused.  Plaintiffs thereafter brought the
 present action, based on theories of negligence, nuisance, trespass, and
 interference with riparian rights.  Defendants argued at trial that they
 were not required to remove the dam under any legal theory, and denied that
 any damages had occurred.  Defendants also argued that plaintiffs were
 required by 10 V.S.A. App. { 43(e) (FN1) to obtain a permit from the Fish and
 Wildlife Commissioner to remove the dam and did not do so, thereby barring
 the present action.
      The trial court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment,
 concluding that { 43(e) superseded all common-law theories of recovery.
 The court reasoned that both defendants and plaintiffs would need a permit
 to remove the dam -- defendants, since they would not have been acting to
 protect their own property, and plaintiffs, since they were not an "owner of
 property" within the meaning of the statute.  The court concluded, however,
 that in the present action the statute relieved defendants of any common-law
 duty to plaintiffs to act with respect to the dam:
             It was not necessary for the defendants to obtain the
           permit to remove the dam, since the plaintiffs could
           have obtained a permit and removed it themselves.  Nor
           can it be found that defendants had a duty to act, for
           one can have no duty to act when one needs a permit to
           perform the act.  Thus, defendants were not negligent.
           Defendants similarly cannot be found to have acted
           recklessly, under [10 V.S.A. App. { 43(e)], as
           plaintiffs assumed the risk of the flooding by not
           taking the permit action themselves.

 The present appeal followed.
      The trial court concluded in effect that plaintiffs' common-law rights
 were abrogated by { 43(e) and that plaintiffs were left to their statutory
 remedies, which they should have pursued.  But there is nothing in the text
 of { 43(e) that denotes or implies abrogation of common-law actions, and we
 have no reason to assume that it overrode preexisting common-law rights.
 We stated in Langle v. Kurkul, 146 Vt. 513, 516,