Opinion ID: 2621725
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Cartwright Litigation

Text: {6} In 1955, a number of water users on the Gallinas filed an action in district court against Public Service Co. of New Mexico (PNM), the successor to New Mexico Power Co., claiming that PNM had trespassed on their senior water rights as adjudicated in the Hope Decree. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 66, 343 P.2d at 655. The water users sought an injunction and damages. Id. The Town intervened in the action and claimed as an affirmative defense that PNM lawfully appropriated water under a pueblo water right belonging to the Town by virtue of the 1835 colonization grant. Id. at 67, 343 P.2d at 656. The district court found in favor of the Town and PNM on the basis of this affirmative defense. Id. at 68, 343 P.2d at 657. The court recognized the existence of the pueblo rights doctrine in New Mexico. Id. The court further found that the Town of Las Vegas and City of Las Vegas were the successors to the Mexican colonization grant. Id. at 67-68, 343 P.2d at 656. The court concluded that the Town possessed a pueblo water right with a priority date of 1835 and that PNM's right to divert water pursuant to the Town's pueblo water right was prior and paramount to the rights of the water users who had initiated the claim. Id. at 70-71, 343 P.2d at 658-59. {7} On appeal, this Court addressed three issues: (1) whether the Hope Decree was res judicata as to PNM and the Town for purposes of precluding their reliance on the pueblo rights doctrine; (2) whether the trial court correctly found that the Town possessed a valid and superior claim to the colonization grant; and (3) whether the pueblo rights doctrine, as recognized by the courts of California, applies in New Mexico. Id. at 71-72, 343 P.2d at 659. We determined that the Hope Decree was not res judicata with respect to the Town or the City of Las Vegas because neither had been a party to the federal action. Id. at 76, 343 P.2d at 662. We also determined that there was substantial evidence in the record to support the district court's determination of the validity of the 1835 community colonization grant by the government of Mexico, as well as the court's recognition of the Town's superior claim to the grant, consistent with the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Maese, 183 U.S. at 580-81, 22 S.Ct. 91. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 78-79, 343 P.2d at 664. The remainder of our opinion in Cartwright focused on the controversial question of whether New Mexico should recognize the pueblo rights doctrine. Id. at 79-85, 343 P.2d at 664-69. {8} As reviewed by this Court in Cartwright, the pueblo rights doctrine recognizes the right of the inhabitants of Mexican or Spanish colonization pueblos to use as much of an adjoining river or stream as is necessary for municipal purposes. Id. at 82, 343 P.2d at 666-67. The doctrine contemplates the expansion of the pueblo's right to use water in response to increases in size and population, and if necessary, the right can encompass the entire flow of the adjoining water course. Id. We noted in Cartwright that the doctrine had been recognized by the Supreme Court of California in a series of cases dating from 1860. Id. at 84, 343 P.2d at 667-68; see Hart v. Burnett, 15 Cal. 530 (1860) (discussing pueblo rights in relation to land); see also Lux v. Haggin, 69 Cal. 255, 10 P. 674, 714-15 (1886) (analogizing the principles from Hart to water rights). {9} We attributed the historical basis of the doctrine to the Plan of Pitic. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 81, 343 P.2d at 665-66. Prepared under the commandant-general of the internal provinces of the viceroyalty of New Spain, the Plan of Pitic served as the organizational design for the town of Pitic when it was founded in 1783. As ordered by the King of Spain, the Plan served as a model for the settlement of pueblos across the internal provinces, including New Mexico. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 84, 343 P.2d at 668. The Plan conformed to the general principles established in the 1680 compilation of the laws governing New Spain, the Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, which continued to be followed by the government of the Republic of Mexico, after independence, at the time of the Las Vegas grant in 1835. We observed in Cartwright that the Plan of Pitic gave the settlement preferred rights to all available water. Id. {10} In discussing the applicability of the pueblo rights doctrine in New Mexico, we recognized that this State applies the doctrine of prior appropriation based on beneficial use, as derived from the civil law system of Spain and Mexico prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 80, 343 P.2d at 665. However, in response to an argument that the pueblo rights doctrine conflicts with New Mexico's system of prior appropriation, we explained that the pueblo rights doctrine is premised on the notion that colonization pueblos were largely, if indeed, not always, established before there was any settlement of the surrounding area. Id. at 79-80, 343 P.2d at 665. As a result, we concluded that the paramount and superior nature of pueblo water rights conforms to the system of prior appropriation. Id. at 80, 343 P.2d at 665. There were no questions of priority of use when a colonization pueblo was established because there were no such users. Id. at 85, 343 P.2d at 668. In addition, we concluded that the expanding nature of pueblo rights did not violate the principle of beneficial use. Water formed the life blood of the community or settlement, not only in its origin but as it grew and expanded. A group of fifty families at the founding of a colony found it no more so than when their number was multiplied to hundreds or even thousands in an orderly, progressive growth. And just as in the case of a private user, so long as he [or she] proceeds with due dispatch to reduce to beneficial use the larger area to which his [or her] permit entitles him [or her], enjoys a priority for the whole, so by analogy and under the rationale of the Pueblo Rights doctrine, the settlers who founded a colonization pueblo, in the process of growth and expansion, carried with them the torch of priority, so long as there was available water to supply the life blood of the expanded community. Id. at 85, 343 P.2d at 668. Accordingly, the pueblo rights doctrine represented the elevation of the public good over the claim of a private right. Id. at 85, 343 P.2d at 669. Based on our determination that the pueblo rights doctrine was not inconsistent with the doctrine of prior appropriation and beneficial use, we concluded that the reasons which brought the Supreme Court of California to uphold and enforce the Pueblo Rights doctrine apply with as much force in New Mexico as they do in California. Id. at 85, 343 P.2d at 668. {11} The dissenting opinion in Cartwright serves to highlight the most controversial aspects of the majority opinion. The dissent contains five primary criticisms of the majority opinion: (1) the actual language of the Plan of Pitic, as opposed to its interpretation by California courts, supports communal sharing of water inside and outside the pueblo's border rather than a paramount and superior right belonging exclusively to the pueblo; (2) the circumstances leading to the adoption of the pueblo rights doctrine in California, specifically a statutory basis for the doctrine and a communal theory of water law, do not exist in New Mexico; (3) the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo does not protect a pueblo right as interpreted by the majority; (4) the premise of the pueblo rights doctrine that the pueblo precedes all other users on the stream does not apply to Las Vegas; and (5) the pueblo rights doctrine violates the fundamental principle of beneficial use. Cartwright, 66 N.M. at 94-105, 343 P.2d at 674-82 (Federici, D.J., dissenting). In response to a motion for rehearing, the dissent elaborated on the latter three of these reasons for disagreeing with the majority opinion. Id. at 106-19, 343 P.2d at 683-92. We discuss these points in greater detail below in the context of the State Engineer's arguments to this Court. {12} Following our decision in Cartwright, the same plaintiffs filed a second claim for damages against PNM. Cartwright v. Pub. Serv. Co. of N.M., 68 N.M. 418, 419, 362 P.2d 796, 796-97 (1961). The plaintiffs alleged that the colonization grant from Mexico belonged to the Town of Las Vegas Grant, meaning the board of trustees established by the Legislature, rather than to the Town of Las Vegas. Id. at 419, 362 P.2d at 797. We held this claim to be res judicata based on our opinion in the first Cartwright. [T]he ownership of the waters of the Gallinas River and its tributaries was the ultimate question to be determined in the first case, and ownership thereof was adjudicated as belonging to the City and Town of Las Vegas as successors to the original Mexican Pueblo. Id. at 420, 362 P.2d at 798.