Court Opinion

ID: 9544720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:00:45.790825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:13:32.357707
License: Public Domain

*742DORAN, J., Dissenting.
I dissent as to that portion of the prevailing opinion affirming the judgment in favor of respondents Jacob H. Yonker and Kathryn L. Yonker. It so happens that these respondents have been for some time the beneficiaries of what, in geology, is known as “erosion”. To most landowners this process is detrimental. The appellant Flood Control District, by interrupting and preventing the process of erosion above respondents ’ land and upon land not owned or controlled by respondents, has destrojmd a sand and gravel pit on respondents’ land. In other words, the continued existence of respondents’ sand and gravel pit depends upon the destruction, by erosion, in some degree of the land above, as a result of which respondents’ sand and gravel pit is replenished thereby from time to time during the rainy season.
Respondents Yonker are not entitled to severance damages for the following reasons: First, in my opinion, the law with respect to riparian rights has no application to the questions involved. The continued benefit of erosion under such circumstances creates no vested right, for in no sense is such a benefit a part of what is recognized, under the law, as “riparian rights”. Second, the Constitution provides that private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use without just compensation. However, the process of erosion is not private property, and such process therefore is no part of respondents’ property. To award damages on such a basis would, in effect, compensate respondents for something which they did not own. Respondents can claim no title, as part of their “private property”, to sand and gravel which may or may not be deposited thereon, according to the weather. The loss of such a benefit as claimed by respondents is not compensable in damages, in my opinion, and the authorities relied upon by appellant, to my mind, support appellant’s contention in this regard.
A petition by appellant to have the cause heard in the Supreme Court, after judgment in the District Court of Appeal, was denied by the Supreme Court on April 8, 1938.
*743MEMORANDUM CASES.