Court Opinion

ID: 9561122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:03:52.104506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:38.431122
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
The petition filed by petitioners alleges that “by mistake the water right certificate included lands never owned by Petitioners or their predecessors in interest and failed to include lands in legal subdivisions for which water rights application was made.” Petitioners ask that this mistake (which is admitted by the demurrer) be rectified by adding what was mistakenly omitted and eliminating what was mistakenly added. Since this is an admitted mistake, it is difficult to understand why petitioners cannot require defendant to correct it. The majority opinion concedes that defendant could be required to correct a “clerical” error but not “nonelerical” errors. I do not understand why this should be so. Apparently the majority have concluded that OES 5B7.270 precludes the correction of certificates for nonclerical errors after the expiration of three months from the date the certificate is issued. I would read this statute to be applicable in a situation where there is a contest between claimants to water rights and not to a situation where the petitioner is merely trying to correct his certificate to reflect the true historical fact that he made a claim *866to a certain amount of water, to be applied to certain land owned by Mm and that he was not claiming the right to use water on land in which he had no interest.
The majority opinion stresses the fact that an applicant may acquire a right to use water on land which he does not own but which he is irrigating under a contract of purchase, or lease, or under a mistaken belief that he owns the land. This may be true, but I fail to see its relevance where, as here, the petitioner is not claiming the right to use the water on any land but his own. Nor do I understand the majority’s concern over the dangers which would arise in the future if certificates could be corrected as petitioners seek to do in the present case. Petitioners are merely asking the record to reveal what admittedly the record would have revealed if it had been correctly written by the State Engineer in the first instance. How can that operate to the detriment of anyone, either now or in the future?
Denegre, J., joins in this opinion.