Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/82257/holyoke-company-vs-lyman
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 18:57:52+00:00

Document:
1. By the settled law of Massachusetts, the rights of fishery in such rivers as the Connecticut, even above the point where it is navigable for boats or rafts, are public rights, and, unless there be some express provision to the contrary, are subject to such reasonable regulations as the state may make for their protection, including the right to require of persons who own or build dams that they construct such fishways as will enable migratory fish to pass from the lower to the higher level of the water occasioned by such dams.
2. The provision of the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts, chapter 44, section 23, and General Statutes, chapter 68, section 41, declaring that acts of incorporation shall be subject to amendment, alteration, or repeal, at the pleasure of the legislature; reserves to the legislature the authority to make any alteration or amendment of a charter granted subject to it, which will not defeat or substantially impair the object of the grant or any rights vested under it and which the legislature may deem necessary to secure either that object or other public or private rights.
3. After a manufacturing corporation, chartered with authority to construct and maintain a dam across a river, paying damages to the owners of fishing rights above, and whose charter does not expressly exempt it from maintaining the dam without a fishway, and is subject under the provision above quoted to amendment, alteration, and repeal at the pleasure of the legislature, has paid such damages and constructed the dam without a fishway, so as to destroy the fishing rights above and to impair similar rights below (for the injury to which last no compensation has ever been made or provided), that corporation, or any other which purchases its dam under the authority of a subsequent statute, may be constitutionally required by the legislature to construct a fishway in the dam to the satisfaction of commissioners appointed by the legislature for the purpose.
"Shall at all times be subject to amendment, alteration, or repeal at the pleasure of the legislature."
"The said corporation shall pay such damages to the owners of the present fishing rights existing above the dam which the said company is herein empowered to construct as may be awarded by the county commissioners of the counties in which said rights exist."
And a mode was provided by which either the company "or any owners of the said fishing rights" might at any time proceed to determine the damages done to them. Nothing was said about damages done to fishing rights below the dam, nor about making or maintaining or not making and maintaining any "fishway." No power was given to condemn the land of others for the site of the dam or for any other purpose.
The Hadley Falls Company built at great expense a dam, but without any fishway in it. Before this dam was built, shad were accustomed to pass up the river beyond the dam, and were of value to the private owners of riparian fishing rights for sale as food, and a source of income to such proprietors both above and below the dam. The dam, however, by preventing the passage of the fish up the river, destroyed the fishing rights above. And compensation to a large amount was made to the owners of fisheries above the dam for the injuries done to their said rights.
the sea. No owners of fishing rights below the dam had, however, ever claimed damages on this account.
"to purchase, take, hold, receive, sell, lease, and dispose of all and any part of the estate, with all the water power, water courses, water privileges, dams, rights, easements, and appurtenances thereto belonging, or therewith connected, which have at any time heretofore belonged to the Hadley Falls Company."
The part of the Connecticut River where this dam was constructed runs through the State of Massachusetts, and is not navigable.
Company, and that the acts of 1866 &c.;, were laws impairing the obligations of contracts, and so in violation of the federal Constitution. The court below, on a proceeding authorized by the statute to make them do so, adjudged otherwise, and its judgment was now here for review.
whether used as power to operate mills and machinery or merely as a fishery, extends only to the middle thread of the stream, as at common law, and is subject to the same conditions and regulations as when the ownership includes the whole soil over which the water of the stream flows. Authority to erect dams across such streams for mill purposes results from the ownership of the bed and the banks of the stream, or the right to construct the same may be acquired by legislative grant in cases where the legislature is of the opinion that the benefit to the public will be of sufficient importance to render it expedient for them to exercise the right of eminent domain and to authorize such an interference with private rights for that purpose. Lands belonging to individuals have often been condemned for such purposes, in the exercise of the right of eminent domain, in cases where, from the nature of the country, mill sites sufficient in number could not otherwise be obtained, and that right is even more frequently exercised to enable mill owners to flow the water back beyond their own limits in order to create sufficient power or head and fall to operate their mills. Concomitant with the authority to erect such dams for such purposes over the beds of watercourses, as resulting from the title to the banks and bed of the stream, is also the exclusive right of fishery, which also has its source in the same ownership of the soil, and the better opinion is that it is not divested or extinguished by any legislative act condemning the land to the use of another for mill purposes unless the words of the grant conferring the authority to construct the dam plainly indicate that such was the intention of the legislature. Water rights of the kind, whether the streams are used for mill purposes or merely as fisheries, are justly entitled to public protection, as they are in many cases of great value to the community where they exist, but they are the source of many conflicting interests which the state legislatures as well as the courts have found it difficult to adjust, as appears from the countless efforts which have been made in that behalf without complete success.
the fishway should be constructed therein, suitable and sufficient to secure the free passage of salmon and shad over the dam and up the river during their accustomed seasons. They also furnished the respondents with the plan and specifications of such fishway, and filed a copy of the same in the office of the secretary of state, and requested the respondents to construct such a fishway or to agree with them as such commissioners to comply with that requirement, but it appears that the respondents refused and neglected so to do, insisting that the state had no power or right to require them to build such a fishway. Entirely different views were entertained by the complainants, and they instituted the present suit to compel the corporation respondents to comply with that requirement, and the state court entered a decree for the complainants. [ Footnote 5 ] Dissatisfied with that decree, the respondents sued out the present writ of error and removed the cause into this Court.
the builders and owners of the dam from the obligation to construct suitable and sufficient fishways for the free passage of fish up the river during their accustomed seasons.
None of these propositions is controverted, but the respondents insist that the acts of the legislature under which they have been required to make the fishways in question impair the obligation of the contract contained in the charter incorporating their grantors, and that those acts are inoperative and void as contravening the article of the Constitution which prohibits the states from passing any law impairing the obligation of contracts.
Evidently the right of fishery, as well as the right to use the water of a stream for mill purposes, is the subject of private ownership, and when held by a good title, the one as much as the other is a vested right, and both alike are entitled to public protection, and are subject in a certain sense to legislative regulation and control. Difficulties in every case attend the proper adjustment of such rights, as the complete enjoyment of the one may interfere with the corresponding enjoyment of the other, but the presumption is, in construing any regulation upon the subject, that the framers of the regulation did not intend to allow either party to disregard the rule that he should so use his own property as not to injure the property of the owner of the other right.
Public rights in all jurisdictions are subject to legislative control, and it is settled law in Massachusetts, and has been for a century and a half, including her colonial history, that the right of fishery in such rivers as the Connecticut and Merrimac, even above the point where they are navigable for boats or rafts, and the right to erect and maintain dams to create water power for mill purposes, are public rights, and that the owners of such rights are bound by such reasonable regulations as the state may make and ordain for their protection and enjoyment.
(1) That the proprietor must make compensation to the owners of the lands above the dam for damages occasioned by overflowing their lands.
Had it appeared in that case that the amended charter contemplated the assessment of damages for fish rights owned below the dam as well as those owned above the dam, the opinion would certainly be more satisfactory, as in that event the theory assumed by the court that all the parties damaged in their fisheries had been indemnified by the owners of the structure would be correct. [ Footnote 25 ] Fish rights below a dam, constructed without passageways for the fish, are liable to be injured by such a structure as well as those owned above the dam, as the migratory fish, if they cannot ascend to the head waters of the stream at their accustomed seasons will soon cease to frequent the stream at all, or in greatly diminished numbers.
from the obligation to reconstruct such fishways, as the amended charter required them to make compensation for the injuries to the fish rights in the place of the prior obligation arising from the rules of the common law of the state and the terms of their original charter, the court holding that the government could not, without any change of circumstances, require the defendants to do the very acts which, by the terms of the amended charter, they had been exempted from doing, but the court declined to decide whether, if the fishways provided should prove to be wholly unfit and inadequate to their purpose, the legislature could not by further legislation require the company to fulfill the original obligation. Sufficient appears to warrant the conclusion that no evidence was introduced in that case to show that the fish rights below the dam suffered any injury whatever, nor does it appear that the attention of the court was drawn to the fact that the river across which the dam was built runs through more than one state. [ Footnote 26 ] Different rules perhaps may be applied in ascertaining the power of a state legislature to authorize permanent obstructions to the free passage of fish in a river flowing through two or more states, like the Connecticut or Merrimac, from the rules which should be applied in a case where the river across which the dam is constructed is wholly within the state which authorizes the structure, but it is not necessary to consider that question in this case, as it was not raised in the state court nor was it presented here by either party.
implication. Even suppose that is so, still they contend that the fourth section of the charter of their grantors should be construed as negativing any such implied condition, but the Court is entirely of a different opinion, as that section makes no provision for any compensation to the owners of the fish rights below the dam, and the record shows that such fish rights, as well as those above the dam, are injured by the obstruction to the free passage of the fish in their accustomed seasons to the headwaters of the river. Authority to construct and maintain a dam without a fishway, it is conceded, is not granted in terms in the charter, and it may be added that the charter does not contain any words to warrant any such implication. On the contrary, the terms and provisions of the charter are consistent with the theory that the legislature contemplated the construction of a dam with a convenient passageway for fish, so as not to impair unnecessarily the rights of the riparian owners either above or below the dam, and that the legislature, if the company failed to fulfill that obligation, may "compel them to do so by more specific legislation." Damages, it is true, were to be paid to "the owners of present fish rights existing above the dam," but the Court here, in respect to that matter, concurs with the state court that the meaning of the sentence is satisfied by regarding it as providing for a partial interruption and injury of those rights and not as contemplating their utter destruction; that the legislature which granted the charter may well have supposed that a dam across the river at that place, with the best fishway that could be constructed, would, to some extent, obstruct the free passage of the fish, and may have intended by that provision to require the owners of the dam to make compensation for such injuries.
provision is made to compensate the owners of the property or rights condemned under that power, but it may be more doubtful whether the legislature of a state can make a contract with such a corporation authorizing them to construct a dam across a river flowing through two or more states, which shall permanently exempt the grantees from all such obligation and destroy forever the rights of fishery in the river throughout its whole course from its source to its confluence with tidewaters.
Concede, however, that the power to make such a contract exists and that it is as boundless as the theory of the respondents assumes it to be, still the Court here is of the opinion that the decree of the state court is correct, and that it should be affirmed, as the charters under which the dam in this case was erected and is maintained do not contain any such exemption from the implied obligation to construct fishways for the free passage of the fish, nor any provision which prohibits the legislature from imposing that obligation under the power reserved to amend, alter, or repeal the charter.
Properly construed, neither of the charters affords any support whatever to the theory of the respondents, as they do not contain any semblance of a grant to take and subvert the fish rights below the dam, nor is there anything in the provision requiring compensation to be made to the owners of the fish rights above the dam, which is not perfectly consistent with the theory that it was incorporated into the charter merely to compensate the owners of such fish rights for injuries which they would suffer from the obstruction, even if the customary fishways were constructed as required by immemorial usage and the express enactment of the legislature.
Chapter 68, § 41; Revised Statutes, chapter 44, § 23.
Special Laws 949; Revised Statutes 328-366.
Sessions Acts 1866, 231; id. 1867, 741; id. 1869, 677-741.
Commissioners on Inland Fisheries v. Holyoke Water Power Co., 104 Mass. 451; Weston v. Sampson, 8 Cushing 347.
Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 709-712; Wales v. Stetson, 2 Mass. 146.
Pennsylvania College Cases, 13 Wall. 213.
Rice v. Railroad Co., 1 Black 380; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 544.
Sedgwick on Statutes and Constitutional Law 339; Lees v. Canal Company, 11 East 652.
Commonwealth v. Chapin, 5 Pickering 204.
Ib., 297; Ib. 17 Geo. II (A.D. 1743) 313; ib., 19 Geo. II (A.D. 1745) 321.
2 Laws of Massachusetts, Appendix, 1020-1026.
Vinton v. Welsh, 9 Pickering 90; Angell on Waters (6th ed.) 72; Washburn on Easements (2d ed.) 501; Peables v. Hannaford, 18 Me. 106; Parker v. Mill Dam Co., 20 id. 353.
1 Provincial Statutes, 12 Anne, ch. 1 (A.D. 1709) 160; ib., 12 Anne, ch. 8 (A.D. 1714) 181; Ancient Charter 388-404; 2 Laws of Massachusetts 729; Revised Statutes (1836), 676; Angell on Waters (6th ed.) 664; Washburn on Easements 332; Murdock v. Stickney, 8 Cushing 119.
Burnham v. Webster, 5 Mass. 266; Nickerson v. Brackett, 10 id. 212; Commonwealth v. McCurdy, 5 id. 324; Cottrill v. Myrick, 12 Me. 229.
Miller v. State, supra, p. 82 U. S. 478 .
Moulton v. Libbey, 37 Me. 484.
Moor v. Veazie, 32 Me. 353; Veazie v. Moor, 14 How. 571.
Revised Statutes 366; Pennsylvania College Cases, 13 Wall. 213.
Commissioners on Inland Fisheries v. Holyoke Water Power Co., 104 Mass. 451.

References: § 41
 § 23
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