Opinion ID: 1427784
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: failures of the majority opinion

Text: The Ninth Circuit appeal by the Landowners, which underlies the certified questions which are before this Court, is two-pronged: It challenges the validity of the evidentiary rulings and instructions in the negligence action, and also challenges the sua sponte dismissal of the alternative theories. The majority opinion fails to recognize the two-pronged nature of the appeal. The majority opinion fails to comprehend that in each of the three certified questions reference to Idaho law implicitly means existing Idaho law. The panel's concern is the state of Idaho law, both statutory and case precedent, which was in effect at the times when the flood-damaging waters were intentionally released by Utah Power. This Court has not been asked to redefine the law, or to declare what it presently perceives the law ought to be. This Court has no controversy before it, and hence has no occasion to forge new law. Yet the majority opinion, after reciting the three certified questions, and after noting the panel's recognition of two lines of cases emanating from this Court, develops its own approach to answering the questions: Our task essentially is to determine which line of cases more closely applies to the factual circumstances presented here, which involves an artificial water diversion and storage system (Bear Lake) which is subsequently discharged into a natural channel (Bear River) and thereafter causes flooding. At 903, 792 P.2d at 928. Readily appearing to dictate a pre-ordained result, the Court holds that the Stephenson and Burt line of cases applies, and accordingly responds no to the three certified questions which supposedly tells all. Id. The Court asks itself: Why does Idaho case law limit the theories of liability which can be brought against a ditch/canal constructor/owner/operator whose waters overflow, whereas no such limitations apply where the transgression is in placing an obstruction or breakwater barrier in a natural water course? The question is both poorly worded, and diversionary. The evolving law as to non-natural watercourses dealt initially in terms of seepage and flooding from artificially constructed irrigation (and, later, drainage) canals. In regard to such artificial irrigation works, it was statutory law which imposed a duty of care upon the constructor/owner/operator. To the interested reader, it may seem inconceivable that an opinion emanates from this Court, in response to the panel's straight forward request for an answer to three questions, which makes no mention of I.C. § 42-1204, and the thorough discussion of its application made by Justice McFadden in authoring this Court's 1976 Brizendine opinion, Brizendine v. Nampa Meridian Irrigation Dist, 97 Idaho 580, 548 P.2d 80 (1976). That opinion was unanimous. One of those justices is the author of today's opinion for the Court. Today's majority in speaking of Burt states that therein  we wrote:... . At 904, 792 P.2d at 929 (emphasis added). Every justice on the Court when Burt was issued has long ago passed away. Although Burt was correctly decided, better I would think that today we would more providently be concerned with the teaching of Brizendine. Unfortunately for Brizendine, it does not fit into the theme of what some may perceive to be the very shallow analysis by which the majority opinion is today able to espouse that [t]he same policies which compelled this Court to limit the liability of irrigation canals from suit for all but an action in negligence also extends to those entities which operate the artificial water diversion and storage systems, i.e., dams and reservoirs which supply the water to the irrigation canals. At 904, 792 P.2d at 929. This assertion is made despite the fact that no statute analogous to I.C. § 42-1204 exists for artificial water diversion and storage systems. The statute which modified the common law and which undergirds the limitation of liability applicable to irrigation canals does not apply to dams and reservoirs. Therefore, that modification of the common law should not apply to limit the theories of liability available to plaintiffs who seek compensation for damage caused by waters released from dams and reservoirs. Quietly and subversively the majority opinion puts irrigation ditches and canals in the same category with dams and reservoirs. This it does without any examination of the two Idaho cases cited to by the Burt court, the territorial decision of McCarty v. Boise City Canal Co., 2 Idaho 245, 10 P. 623 (1886), and Stuart v. Noble Ditch Co, 9 Idaho 765, 76 P. 255 (1904). The McCarty opinion was issued just three years after the enactment of what is now codified as I.C. § 42-1204, and which has not been amended in 110 years. Obviously the complaint in that action was founded on the statute. The allegations of the complaint included the giving of notice to the defendant in compliance with the statute, and the defendant's yet persisting in not repairing his ditches so as to stop the overflowing of plaintiff's land. The real issue in the case was defendant's claim that plaintiff at very little expense to himself could have avoided the damages. The Stuart case was somewhat different, but not much. The allegations of the complaint were couched in the language of what is now I.C. § 42-1204. Likewise the requirement of notice was apparently involuntary under the statute. Although the company called itself the Noble Ditch Company, it appears that it was the owner and operator of a ditch of sufficient stature to be called a canal. Those two cases seem to stand for no more than that the statute mentioned created liability, and there was no need to resort to invoke any claim of strict liability. For certain those cases were not limitations on the liability imposed by Fletcher v. Rylands, but rather were creation of statutory liability. The majority opinion, notwithstanding the exhibition of little research into prior case law, is entitled to credit for its citation to Boise Development Co. v. Boise City, 30 Idaho 675, 167 P. 1032 (1917). The majority sees that Boise Development case as dealing with the alteration or obstruction of natural streams, which, in consideration of the fact that the instant case deals with the natural stream or watercourse which was at one time the Bear River, makes pertinent the statement that `liability in such cases [does not] rest solely upon the narrow ground of negligence, but rather upon the broad legal principle that no one is permitted to so use his property as to invade the property of another. ' 30 Idaho at 690, 167 P. at 1035. At 905, 792 P.2d at 930 (emphasis added). However, it is quickly observed that the citation to the foregoing case is but a diversionary tactic. The author immediately retreats to asserting that such case law has no application to the factual scenario set forth in the (panel's) certification order. Id. This thought is said to flow from the fact that Utah Power is simply carrying out its balancing duty. Apparently this is urged upon the premise that Utah Power has God-like authority in that regard. The explanation is that in carrying out its duty, Utah Power must not be held to any standard of conduct other than reasonableness, and that reasonableness must be only equated with not being negligent. This is not acceptable, except to the four members of this Court who wrongly apply it to the claim of the plaintiffs in this case. To my mind, it is pure ipse dixit, every bit as much as so as Utah Power's supplications to this Court to decline to accept the certified question. Utah Power, completely in charge of the operation by which the waters of a natural watercourse, Bear River, were impounded, and stored in a reservoir superimposed on Bear Lake, has assumed the responsibility that goes hand in glove with authority. Kunz I, 526 F.2d 500, taught Utah Power the lesson of foreseeability. Yet, far into the spring months of each of the years in question, it filled that reservoir to the point where it became inevitable that the lands of the landowners would be flooded. The decision to throw this risk to the landowners was within the power of one entity to make  Utah Power. The decision to do as it did was not negligence. Far from that, it appears to have been just the opposite, a calculated business decision, a matter of corporate economics. Eventually it all came to pass, and the stored waters had to be released, not to irrigate the farms of the landowners but to flood those fertile fields. This type of conduct is available to corporate entities. The only risk of decision which they faced was the possibility of being sued, not a bad risk at all to those who know the tremendous expense and risk of litigation. The landowners have been inequitably treated, whether they ultimately prevail or lose. As I stated earlier, far better that Chief Justice Bakes and those who joined his opinion would have been more concerned with the Brizendine case, wherein Justice Bakes was part of a unanimous Court. That Court clearly understood that the rule of Rylands was alive and well in Idaho. Justice McFadden is not now, and was not in 1976, much given to idle writing. Had he thought that Rylands had expired somehow, he would have so written. Instead he wrote that the cross-appeal need not be considered because the plaintiffs had prevailed on the theory of negligence. In signing on to Justice McFadden's opinion, not one member of the Court spoke up to urge that Rylands had died somewhere in the past. The rule of Rylands clearly applies to the claim of the plaintiffs. Moreover, a deliberate, calculated, intentional decision on the part of Utah Power to continue the impounding of waters far into the spring months, knowing what it knew, and the previous experience it had had, was not negligence but deliberate conduct, and a jury is entitled to hear the evidence. Nor can I see any reason for not allowing the jury to hear evidence on the theories of trespass and nuisance. Clearly the state of Idaho law at the least allows the landowners the opportunity to test out their claims.