Opinion ID: 1170215
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Status of Judgment as to Verdugo Basin

Text: In the Verdugo basin the trial court's judgment awarded prescriptive rights to defendants City of Glendale and Crescenta Valley County Water District. Since we have rejected plaintiff's claim that its pueblo right extends to the Verdugo basin, we perceive no adverse effect on plaintiff's interests from the portions of the judgment adjudicating rights in that basin. Although plaintiff delivers imported Owens water to the part of its Sunland-Tujunga service area located within the basin, plaintiff has never extracted ground water from the basin and apparently has no facilities for doing so. None of the defendants has appealed. Plaintiff's appeal raised for review only the portions of the judgment adverse to its interests and any reversal should not extend to those portions which can remain without injuriously affecting plaintiff or otherwise creating an injustice. (See Blache v. Blache (1951) 37 Cal.2d 531, 538 [233 P.2d 547]; Lake v. Superior Court (1921) 187 Cal. 116, 119-120 [200 P. 1041].) There is nothing adverse to plaintiff in the trial court's adjudication of rights in the Verdugo basin. Plaintiff contends that the judgment erroneously enjoins it from making future appropriations of surplus water from the basin. The judgment does not go that far. It declares that defendants Glendale and Crescenta Valley County Water District and no other party own water rights in the basin and enjoins those two defendants from taking from the basin more than the amounts specified by the judgment. The judgment's declaration that plaintiff owns no Verdugo basin water rights is correct. If plaintiff should acquire rights to the basin's water in the future, the present judgment would not bar it from asserting them. ( Lake Merced Golf & Country Club v. Ocean Shore R.R. Co. (1962) 206 Cal. App.2d 421, 435 [23 Cal. Rptr. 881].) Accordingly, there is no ground for reversal of those provisions of the judgment which declare and limit rights to extract water from the Verdugo basin. [103]