Court Opinion

ID: 9852639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:34:11.977184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:31.594169
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(specially concurring).
Although both litigants pose the legal issues in this case as pertaining to the doctrine of res judicata, the law concerning the drainage of surface waters is also treated by this opinion. Our opinion in Gross v. Connecticut Mutual Life Ins. Co., 361 N.W.2d 259 (S.D.1985), was filed on January 9, 1985, some three months after the briefs were filed herein. Obviously, these parties were unaware of the holding in Gross, as Gross was not handed down when the briefs were filed herein. Gross thoroughly reviewed the “civil law rule” cited by the majority opinion in Thompson v. Andrews, 165 N.W. 9, and at least one subsequent decision citing Thompson, namely Johnson v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 71 S.D. 155, 22 N.W.2d 737 (1946). Gross, as in the instant case, not only involved surface waters but incep-tually an injunction and later damages. In Gross, a feedlot dam was cut which caused flooding. Here, we have the apparent cutting away of a ridge creating an artificial ditch.
That injunctive relief may be an appropriate remedy for injury suffered by unlawful flooding, see Tisher v. Jarrett, 75 S.D. 503, 68 N.W.2d 592 (1955) and Farris v. Moore, 71 S.D. 482, 26 N.W.2d 130 (1947). Such an injunctive grant rests in the discretion of the trial court. Hofer v. Bridgewater Ind. Sch. Dist., 76 S.D. 483, 81 N.W.2d 300 (1957). It is vital and prerequisite to such relief that an inadequate remedy at law be established. Hein v. Marts, 295 N.W.2d 167 (S.D.1980); Anderson v. Kennedy, 264 N.W.2d 714 (S.D.1978). To obtain an injunction, the right to the relief must be established with reasonable certainty. Hofer, 81 N.W.2d 300. An old ease, but still good law, was cited and its language approved in Gross, 361 N.W.2d at 265, to wit: “An injunction should only be granted where, under the facts proven, it appears reasonably certain that the granting thereof will protect the party seeking it from some injury that would result in his *92damage.” Alsager v. Peterson, 31 S.D. 452, 456, 141 N.W. 391, 392 (1913).
I concur with the majority opinion’s assessment of the res judicata issue and particularly its citation to Black Hills Jewelry Mfg. v. Felco Jewel Ind., 336 N.W.2d 153 (S.D.1983), which, when applied to the facts of this case, would sustain the majority opinion’s viewpoint.