Court Opinion

ID: 9704913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:51:44.985669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:06.458191
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing
EUGENE A. BURDICK, District Judge.
The respondents have filed a petition for rehearing in which they suggest that the court has overlooked a controlling statute, Section 47-0610 NDRC 1943 which reads as follows:
“If a stream, navigable or not navigable, in forming itself a new arm divides itself and surrounds land belonging to the owner of the shore and thereby forms an island, the island belongs to such owner.”
This statute contemplates a situation where a stream in high water, whether suddenly by avulsion, perhaps induced by an ice gorge in its channel, or gradually by intermittent action at flood stage, cuts a new or auxiliary channel around a portion of the mainland and leaves such portion intact as an island and as a recognizable segment of the mainland from which it was severed. It has no application to the situation in the case at bar where the stream, moving by gradual and imperceptible degrees, eroded and utterly destroyed the mainland in the area in controversy, leaving no part of it intact and identifiable above low-water mark. See Payne v. Hall, 192 Iowa 780, 185 N.W. 912.
We adhere to our former opinion.
BURKE, C. J., GRIMSON and MORRIS, JJ., and JOHN SAD, District Judge, concur.
SATHRE and JOHNSON, JJ., did not participate.