Opinion ID: 104812
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: claimants' riparian rights under california law.

Text: The adversaries in this case invoke rival doctrines of water law which have been in competition throughout California legal history. The claims are expressly based on common-law riparian-rights doctrines as declared by California courts. The United States, on the other hand, by virtue of the Reclamation Act, stands in the position of an upstream appropriator for a beneficial use. The governing water law of California must now be derived from a 1928 Amendment to its Constitution [16] which compresses into a single paragraph a reconciliation and modification of doctrines evolved in litigations that have vexed its judiciary for a century. Its text leaves many questions to be answered, and neither it nor any legislation or judicial decision provides a direct and explicit determination of the present state law on issues before us. But since the federal law adopts that of the State as the test of federal liability, we must venture a conclusion as to peculiarly local law. We can do so only in the light of a long history of strife and doctrinal conflict, which California says must be known by every judge of these matters, Conger v. Weaver, 6 Cal. 548, and in continuity with which both the cryptic text of the Amendment and the policy of federal statutes become more intelligible. [17] Upon acquiring statehood in 1850, California adopted the common law of England as the rule of decision in its courts when not inconsistent with the Federal or State Constitutions or State legislation. In the middle of the Eighteenth Century, English common law included a body of water doctrine known as riparian rights. That also was the general Mexican law, if it had any lingering authority there, but see Boquillas Cattle Co. v. Curtis, 213 U. S. 339, 343; Gutierres v. Albuquerque Land Co., 188 U. S. 545, 556, except for a peculiar concession to pueblos. Indeed, riparian-rights doctrines prevailed throughout Western civilization. As long ago as the Institutes of Justinian, running waters, like the air and the sea, were res communes things common to all and property of none. Such was the doctrine spread by civil-law commentators and embodied in the Napoleonic Code and in Spanish law. This conception passed into the common law. From these sources, but largely from civil-law sources, the inquisitive and powerful minds of Chancellor Kent and Mr. Justice Story drew in generating the basic doctrines of American water law. Riparian rights developed where lands were amply watered by rainfall. The primary natural asset was land, and the run-off in streams or rivers was incidental. Since access to flowing waters was possible only over private lands, access became a right annexed to the shore. The law followed the principle of equality which requires that the corpus of flowing water become no one's property and that, aside from rather limited use for domestic and agricultural purposes by those above, each riparian owner has the right to have the water flow down to him in its natural volume and channels unimpaired in quality. The riparian system does not permit water to be reduced to possession so as to become property which may be carried away from the stream for commercial or nonriparian purposes. In working out details of this egalitarian concept, the several states made many variations, each seeking to provide incentives for development of its natural advantages. These are set forth in Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U. S. 1. But it may be said that when California adopted it the general philosophy of the riparian-rights system had become common law throughout what was then the United States. Then in the mountains of California there developed a combination of circumstances unprecedented in the long and litigious history of running water. Its effects on water laws were also unprecedented. Almost at the time when Mexico ceded California, with other territories, to the United States, gold was discovered there and a rush of hardy, aggressive and venturesome pioneers began. If the high lands were to yield their treasure to prospectors, water was essential to separate the precious from the dross. The miner's need was more than a convenience it was a necessity; and necessity knows no law. But conditions were favorable for necessity to make law, and it didlaw unlike any that had been known in any part of the Western world. The adventurers were in a little-inhabited, unsurveyed, unowned and almost ungoverned country, theretofore thought to have little value. It had become public domain of the United States and miners regarded waters as well as lands subject to preemption. To be first in possession was to be best in title. Priorityof discovery, location and appropriationwas the primary source of rights. Fortuitously, along lower reaches of the streams there were no riparian owners to be injured and none to challenge customs of the miners. In September, 1850, California was admitted to the Union as a State. In 1851, its first Legislature enacted a Civil Practice Act which contained a provision that in actions respecting `Mining Claims,' . . . customs, usages, or regulations, when not in conflict with the Constitution and Laws of this State, shall govern the decision of the action. [18] The custom of appropriating water thus acquired some authority, notwithstanding its contradiction of the common law. A practice that was law in the mountains was contrary to the law on the books. Here were provocations to controversy that soon came to the newly established state courts. In California, as everywhere, the law of flowing streams has been the product of contentions between upper and lower levels. Thus when Matthew Irwin built a dam and canal on the upper San Joaquin for appropriating water to supply miners, downstream settler Robert Phillips tore it down and asserted his own riparian right to have the water descend to him in its natural volume. Faced with this issue between custom and doctrine, the California Supreme Court escaped by observing that both claims were located on public domain, and that neither party could show proprietorship. Accordingly, as between two mere squatters, priority of appropriation established the better right. But the court gave warning that this appropriative right might not prevail against a downstream riparian who claimed by virtue of proprietorship. Irwin v. Phillips, 5 Cal. 140 (1855). The United States, as owner of the whole public domain, was such a proprietor, and the decision made appropriations vulnerable to its challenge. It also left the pioneers in position of trespassers. They were taught that the tenure of their preemptions and appropriations was precarious when, in 1858, the Attorney General of the United States intervened in private litigation to contend in federal court that the land in dispute was public, and asserted generally a right to restrain all mining operations upon public land. His intervention was successful, an injunction forbade working the mine in question, and a writ issued under the hand of President Lincoln directing military authorities to remove the miners. United States v. Parrott, 1 McAll. (C. C.) 271. Demands of mining and water interests that the Federal Government relieve their uncertain status were loud, but went unheeded amidst the problems that came with civil war. But after the war closed, the issue was again precipitated by a bill introduced at the request of the Secretary of the Treasury to have the United States withdraw all mines from the miners, appraise and sell them, reserving a royalty after sale. This the Secretary believed would yield a large revenue and the public lands would help pay the public war debt. However, the private interests prevailed. The Act of July 26, 1866, 14 Stat. 251, R. S. § 2339, declared the mining lands free and open to preemption and included the following: That whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, or other purposes, have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same; and the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes aforesaid is hereby acknowledged and confirmed: Provided, however, That whenever, after the passage of this act, any person or persons shall, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage the possession of any settler on the public domain, the party committing such injury or damage shall be liable to the party injured for such injury or damage. 14 Stat. 251, 253, 43 U. S. C. § 661. This section was expounded by Mr. Justice Field in Jennison v. Kirk, 98 U. S. 453, as foreclosing further proprietary objection by the United States to appropriations which rested upon local custom. This Court regarded the Act as an unequivocal grant for existing diversions of water on the public lands. Broder v. Water Co., 101 U. S. 274. Thus Congress made good appropriations in being as against a later patent to riparian parcels of the public domain, and removed the cloud cast by adverse federal claims. While this was being accomplished, changed conditions brought new adversaries to contend against the appropriators. The Homestead Act of 1862 had opened agricultural lands to preemption and set up a method of acquiring formal title. 12 Stat. 392. Farms and ranches appeared along the streams and wanted the protection that the common law would give to their natural flow. The Act of 1866, as we have noted, made appropriators liable for damage to settlers with whose possession they interfered. The Supreme Court of California decided that a riparian owner came into certain rights which he could assert against a subsequent appropriator of the waters of the stream, even though he could not as against a prior appropriation. Crandall v. Woods, 8 Cal. 136. In 1886 came the decisive battle of Lux v. Haggin, 69 Cal. 255, 10 P. 674. Haggin organized an irrigation company and claimed the right to appropriate the entire flow of the Kern River for irrigation and to destroy any benefits for riparian owners downstream. The court held that the doctrine of riparian rights still prevailed in California, that such right attached to riparian land as soon as it became private property and, while subject to appropriations made prior to that time, it is free from all hostile appropriations thereafter. Thus California set itself apart by its effort to reconcile the system of riparian rights with the system of appropriation, whereas other arid states rejected the doctrine of riparian rights forthrightly and completely. The Twentieth Century inducted new parties into the old struggle. Gigantic electric power and irrigation projects succeeded smaller operations, and municipalities sought to by-pass intervening agricultural lands and go into the mountains to appropriate the streams for city supply. Increasing dependence of all branches of the State's economy, both rural and urban, upon water centered attention upon its conservation and maximum utilization. This objective seemed frustrated by the riparian-rights doctrine when, in 1926, the California Supreme Court decided Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Co., 200 Cal. 81, 252 P. 607, and this Court, after argument, dismissed certiorari for want of a federal question, 275 U. S. 486 (1927). That case involved just such questions as we have here. Southern California Edison projected a large storage of San Joaquin waters in the mountains primarily for power generation. Plaintiffs' ranch, like lands of claimants, had always been naturally irrigated by overflow and thus naturally was productive property. Appropriation by the power company threatened to impair this overflow and destroy the value of the ranch. The company was unwilling to compensate the damage. The court held that common law of riparian rights must prevail against the proposed utilization and, notwithstanding the economic waste involved in plaintiffs' benefit, enjoined the power project. This ruling precipitated a movement for amendment of the State Constitution and thus brought to a focus a contest that had grown in bitterness and intensity throughout the arid regions as both populations and property values mounted. The doctrine of riparian rights was characterized as socialistic. Wiel, Theories of Water Law, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 530 (1914). The State Supreme Court said the law of appropriation would result in monopoly. Lux v. Haggin, supra, at 309, 10 P. at 703. If the uneconomic consequences of unlimited riparianism were revealed by court decisions, so the effects of unrestrained appropriation became apparent where the flow of rivers became completely appropriated, leaving no water for newcomers or new industry. [19] A Joint Committee of the California Legislature gave extended study to the water problems of that State and careful consideration of many remedies. Among other proposals, one relevant to our question was to revoke or nullify all common-law protection to riparian rights and do it retroactively as of the year 1850. [20] The Committee rejected all dispossession proposals as confiscatory. It reported an amendment to the Constitution which attempted to serve the general welfare of the State by preserving and limiting both riparian and appropriative rights while curbing either from being exercised unreasonably or wastefully. The Amendment was submitted to and adopted by the electors in November 1928 and now constitutes California's basic water law, to which the Federal Reclamation Act defers. We cannot assume that this Amendment was without impact upon claims to water rights such as we have here, for, as we have seen, it was provoked by their assertion. Neither can we assume that its effect is to deprive riparian owners of benefits it declares to continue or unintentionally to strike down values there was a studied purpose to preserve. We are only concerned with whether it continued in claimants such a right as to be compensable if taken. But what it took away is some measure of what it left. Riparianism, pressed to the limits of its logic, enabled one to play dog-in-the-manger. The shore proprietor could enforce by injunction his bare technical right to have the natural flow of the stream, even if he was getting no substantial benefit from it. This canine element in the doctrine is abolished. The right to water or to the use or flow of water in or from any natural stream or water course in this State is and shall be limited to such water as shall be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served, . . . . This limitation is not transgressed by the awards in question which only compensate for the loss of actual beneficial use. Any hazard to claimants' rights lurks in the following clause: and such right does not and shall not extend to the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use or unreasonable method of diversion of water. Since riparian rights attach to, and only to, so much of the flow of the San Joaquin as may be put to beneficial use consistently with this clause, claimants can enforce no use of wasteful or unreasonable character. We assume for purposes of this decision that the prodigal use, inseparable from claimants' benefits, is such that the rights here asserted might not be enforced by injunction. But withholding equitable remedies, such as specific performance, mandatory orders or injunctions, does not mean that no right exists. There may still be a right invasion of which would call for indemnification. In fact, adequacy of the latter remedy is usually grounds for denial of the former. But the public welfare, which requires claimants to sacrifice their benefits to broader ones from a higher utilization, does not necessarily require that their loss be uncompensated any more than in other takings where private rights are surrendered in the public interest. The waters of which claimants are deprived are taken for resale largely to other private land owners not riparian to the river and to some located in a different water shed. Thereby private lands will be made more fruitful, more valuable, and their operation more profitable. The reclamation laws contemplate that those who share these advantages shall, through water charges, reimburse the Government for its outlay. This project anticipates recoupment of its cost over a forty-year period. [21] No reason appears why those who get the waters should be spared from making whole those from whom they are taken. Public interest requires appropriation; it does not require expropriation. We must conclude that by the Amendment California unintentionally destroyed and confiscated a recognized and adjudicated private property right, or that it remains compensable although no longer enforcible by injunction. The right of claimants at least to compensation prior to the Amendment was entirely clear. Insofar as any California court has passed on the exact question, the right appears to survive. [22] Five years after the Amendment, the Superior Court of California [23] specifically sustained identical rights. The Madera Irrigation District had been organized to build a dam at the Friant site and to divert San Joaquin waters to irrigate about 170,000 acres. It was sued by Miller & Lux, Inc., and two of its subsidiaries, and decrees in their favor were entered in 1933. In general, the court sustained the Miller & Lux riparian rights to the annual overflow of uncontrolled grass lands, some of which now belong to claimants. It adjudged the proposed appropriation invalid and ineffective as against those rights. In July of 1940 the United States acquired all of Madera's rights, including pending applications to appropriate San Joaquin water under state law. These judgments had become final and were outstanding adjudications of the issues here involved against a grantor of the United States. Without considering the claim that the 1933 judgments may be res judicata, they are at least persuasive that claimants' rights to the benefit had, in the opinion of California courts, survived the Amendment and must be retired by condemnation or acquisition before the Friant diversion could be valid. The Supreme Court of California has given no answer to this specific problem. But in the light of its precedents and its conclusions and discussions of collateral issues, especially in Peabody v. Vallejo, 2 Cal. 2d 351, 40 P. 2d 486; Lodi v. East Bay Municipal Utility District, 7 Cal. 2d 316, 60 P. 2d 439; Hillside Water Co. v. Los Angeles, 10 Cal. 2d 677, 76 P. 2d 681; Gin S. Chow v. Santa Barbara, 217 Cal. 673, 22 P. 2d 5; Meridian, Ltd. v. San Francisco, 13 Cal. 2d 424, 90 P. 2d 537; Los Angeles v. Glendale, 23 Cal. 2d 68, 142 P. 2d 289, we conclude that claimants' right to compensation has a sound basis in California law. The reclamation authorities were apparently of that view as the Miller & Lux contract would indicate. We recognize that the right to inundation asserted here is unique in the history of riparian claims. Where the thirst of the land is supplied by rainfall, floods are detriments if not disasters, and to abate overflows could rarely if ever cause damage. But, as we have pointed out, uncommon local conditions have given rise to the singular rule of California. The same scarcity which makes it advantageous to take these waters gives them value in the extraordinary circumstances in which the California courts have recognized a private right to have no interception of their flow except upon compensation. We think the awards of the Court of Claims correctly applied the law of California as made applicable to these claims by Congress.