Court Opinion

ID: 9583729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:41:35.140973+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:51.795731
License: Public Domain

*1285ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting).
The defendants owned 40 acres of land on which a well had been drilled. They sold the land and well to the plaintiffs for $32,000. The contract of sale contained the following paragraphs:
Upon payment in full of said contract price, Sellers will convey by warranty deed the final easterly contiguous Ten (10) acres of said property, together with all water rights to well already drilled upon said property Certificate #-including Two (2) second feet of water, one second foot of which Buyer will furnish. Seller to Deed therewith an electric pump for said well. .
* * * * * *
Sellers further agree that Buyers shall have exclusive use of said Well and electric pump and 2 second feet of water from said Well until and during the period of said Contract until paid in full.
The water in the well was sufficient to permit the required flow; however, there was the problem of having an approval from the State Engineer to change the point of diversion. The defendants owned sufficient water to complete the contract but it came from a different basin and the State Engineer would not allow the parties to transfer the water to the well.
The plaintiff’s father had died and the estate owned (or claimed to own) five second feet of water which plaintiff’s mother, as administratrix of her husband’s estate, transferred to plaintiff. The plaintiff then transferred three second feet of water to the defendants. This water was out of the same artesian basin as was the well in question. Defendants thereupon allocated one second foot of the water to the well and filed an application to have the point of diversion of the water changed to the new well. This application would have been granted had it not been for a protest of title filed by another man (also named Castagno) and the Federal Land Bank Association. The State Engineer set the matter for hearing, but the plaintiffs’ attorney caused the hearing to be canceled. The procedure in the office of the State Engineer is to wait until there are other contests or protests and then send a deputy out to the county and hear all of them at one sitting. This suit was commenced before any further hearing could be had on the protest.
The trial court would not allow any testimony regarding the intentions of or agreements between the parties and held the contract was not ambiguous. Therefore, he looked only within the “four corners of the document.” The defendants had agreed to furnish one second foot of water and had not done so. Therefore, the trial court granted judgment to the plaintiffs and assessed damages in the amount of $12,000.
The plaintiffs produced a witness who testified that the land with one second foot of water was worth $1,500 per acre, but without the water it was worth only $500 per acre.
If the court is right in finding a depreciation in land value of $1,000 per acre, one would think the plaintiffs’ damages should be $40,000 instead of $12,000. The fault lies in the fact that the damage sustained is not a difference in the value of the land; rather, it would be the value of one second foot of water at the proposed site of diversion.
The plaintiffs still own two second feet of water and since the contract required them to furnish one second foot of water to the well, their land could not sustain any loss for the reason that one second foot of water would be more than ample to irrigate the 40 acres of land in question. A “second foot of water” is a flow which yields one cubic foot of water every second.
There are 86,400 seconds in a day (60 x 60 x 24). An acre of land contains 43,560 square feet. Therefore, in one day, one second foot of water would cover two acres of land one foot deep (86,400 divided by 43,560 equals 1.98347 feet). That would be one foot deep every 20 days for *1286the entire tract (40 divided by 2). This would be more than one foot of water every three weeks or over four inches of water per week which would seem to be enough water for a rice paddy and rice does not grow in Tooele County, Utah. There would be no diminution to the value of the land by reason of the failure to have two second feet of water upon it. As I said before, the damage, if any was sustained, would be the value of one second foot of water at the well, and there is no evidence in the record as to what that value would be.
A further point to be kept in mind is that if there is any defect in the title to the water which defendants assigned to the well, it ill behooves plaintiffs to complain about it for the title of defendants to that water came through the plaintiffs.
I would reverse the trial court and remand the matter for a new trial. I would also award costs to the defendants.