Bisbee daily review., 1919-04-02
COURT FIGHT BEGUN OVER DISPOSITION OF. WARREN RANCH LANDS
Action to Prevent Setting Up of Residence Tract Is Filed
 at Tombstone


 Country club and the Osborn station, was filed yesterday in the superior court of CochIse county by Hoval A. Smith, one of the stockholders in the Warren Ranch company against the Warren Ranch company, a corpora tion, the Garden Development con- pany, a corporation, H. B. Hovland, E. B. Frawley and George c. Hilzinger The suit is over disposition of the lands of the Warren ranch and of the water now being utilized on the Warren ranch irrigated acreage.
 The suit grows out of the attempt on the part of H. B. Hovland and the Garden Development company to set up a new tract of small acre homes on the east side fthe Osborn-Warren railroad, and seeks to annuI the lease of the Garden Development company from the Warren Ranch company of this acreage and asks a temporary injunction restraining the Garden De velopment company from a nattempt to exercise its rights or do anything under the lease.
 Public Is Warned.
 Simultaneous with the filing of the suit notice of the pendency of the action was recorded in the office of the county recorder with the purpose of giving notice of the action to any persons who might be prospective set tiers on the lands.
 The history of the case dates back several years to the formation of the Warren Ranch company by Smith and Hovland, the two largest holders of stock in the project. Immediately after the ranch company was formed the owners obtained from the Calu- met & Arizona Mining company an indeterminate lease of all waters pumped from the company's mines in the Warren district. This water is carried to the ranch by a Hume, running from Bisbee, through Lowell and Warren, and emptyfng into the eompany's ditches near the Warren district country club.
 Within the past few months, the action sets forth. Hovland has se- cured control of the boar dof direc- tors of the Warren Ranch company. Meantime the Garden Development company has been formed ana lands of the Warren Ranch company have been leased to the deveIopment com pany. for the purpose of setting up colony of small irrigated sections of land below the Country cinb.
 Planned Residence Tract.
 The plan of the Garden Develop ment company is to set up streets and grades on the lands east fthe railroad, track park the lands, and lease them for periods of twenty-five years to residents of this district and others. Waters which heretofore have gone to the irrigated lands of the Warren company would then be diverted to the leasees O fthe De- velopment company property.
 Smith, plaintiff in the action. sets up as causes for annulment of the lease and granting of the temporary injunction that it is beyond the pow CT of the ranch board of directors to make the lease; that the lease amounts to a gift of the ranch con- pany property to the development company; that no adequate considera- tion is offered for the ranch eompanySs losses; that the ranch company, with the present property under irrigation. is worth in the neighborhood of S2OO.- m fbnf @l1 and applied to the leased lands the present value of the now cultivated lands practically would be destroyed; that the effect of the contract will be to turn over the management and control of the ranch company to the development company and ao abandon the purposes of the ranch company; that the lease has been made by Hov- land, in control of the Ranch com pany board of directors, without the authority of the stockholders or no tice to the plaintiff, who himself is large stOckholder: and, finally, that the lease, covering the surface of 37 patented mining claims, will in effect destroy teh value of the claims as mining property through the 25-year period of the lease, and will prevent the development an doperation of the claims.
 Contention of the plaintiff is that diversion of the waters which in the past have made a garden of the War ren ranch and which have kept sev- eral hundred acres of the ranch prop erty on the west side or the railroad track under cultivation, will deprive these lands now under irrigation of waters which will be c--er:eG to the new lands The section of the ranch which would be opened up under the development company project is now desert land, from which the sage and grease wood have never been cut. "STRANGLER" LEWIS IS