Court Opinion

ID: 9527983
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:36:01.583515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:21.417975
License: Public Domain

REIF, Special Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I wish to state that I join the views expressed by Justice Lavender. In writing separately, I do not propose to improve upon his analysis and conclusions. Rather, I offer this brief statement because I once held the general viewpoint of the majority opinion that a riparian has a vested right to initiate any reasonable use at any time.
Admittedly, the hallmark of riparian law has been the settling of controversies caused by new uses conflicting with established uses. The courts were called upon to weigh the competing interests (and others that may be affected) and determine or define what constituted a reasonable use at a given point in time. Established uses had to accommodate and sometimes yield to new ones, because the law treated “the right” of riparians to the use of the waters of a stream as a qualified and not an absolute right of property. Martin v. British American Oil Producing Co., 187 Okla. 193, 102 P.2d 124 (1940).
Such give and take, however, suggested to me that the riparian right was as fluid as the water it represented and, indeed, expanded or contracted based upon changing conditions and needs. It also suggested to me that the critical element has not been “the right” but the power by which adjustments have been made over time and at any given time. Although such power has been most commonly exercised by the courts, it is not exclusively within the ambit of judicial power to weigh competing interests, to define or refine legal rights, and furnish remedies and other means to protect such rights. The legislature unquestionably has such power as well.
The 1963 legislation under consideration represented legislative weighing of the competing interests to stream water in Oklahoma, effectively defined reasonable use that might thereafter arise to be domestic use, and provided for appropriation of “unused” stream water after protecting existing reasonable riparian uses and prospective domestic uses. In addition, it provided a comprehensive system to review, manage and regulate the use of stream water. This has furnished a much more viable approach to addressing and protecting the multitude of interests and needs than the ad hoc approach of riparian litigation.
In my analysis, the legislature did nothing more in 1963 than the courts have been doing for decades: define the scope of reasonable use by a riparian. In doing so, it is not beyond the exercise of power to circumscribe uses as of a particular point in time. In Smith v. Stanolind Oil & Gas, 197 Okla. 499, 172 P.2d 1002 (1946), the court refused to disturb injunctive relief that restrained an up-stream use only insofar as it impaired an existing domestic and livestock use of the downstream plaintiffs. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that they should have received protection for increased and future uses, as well.
Prospective or future uses by riparians have not been recognized or treated as “vested” any more than the riparian right itself has been treated as an absolute right of property. Accordingly, I cannot agree that such future or prospective uses were untouchable by the 1963 legislation or that the legislature impaired or abrogated a protected right in limiting such future/prospective uses to domestic uses.