Court Opinion

ID: 9625536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:43:53.133325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:10.605346
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting):
I cannot find any negligence on the part of the defendant which was a proximate cause of any damage to the plaintiff. The defendant maintains a canal along the contour of some hills and above the Santa Clara River from which water is diverted and used to generate electric current. This canal has a capacity of 16 c. f. s. (cubic feet per second) and will not overflow when that amount of water flows in it.
On . the day in question there was approximately 9 c. f. s. diverted from the river into the canal and, had it not been for a cloudburst of unprecedented proportions, that amount of water would have reached the defendant’s power plant without any problems being raised.
The trouble arises from the fact that sheets of water from the hills ran into and across the canal and onto the plaintiffs’ property. The defendant was guilty of no negligence whatsoever. However, the plaintiff, the trial court, and the main opinion herein give judgment against the defendant for some sort of “backhanded last clear chance opportunity” to avoid harm which defendant did not cause.
It is claimed that if the defendant had opened the penstock valve and pulled some planks out of its forebay (reservoir), the canal could have carried its augmented load of water safely past the plaintiffs’-house.
In the first place the defendant owed no duty to the plaintiff to do anything which is claimed would have avoided his damage. In -the second place the defendant had no opportunity to do the things now asserted to be the cause of the harm.
The plaintiff himself testified that he was at a neighbor’s house about half a mile away when the flood began and by the time he got home,- “My wife was out with a shovel trying to block off the water coming out of the canal and she told me what had happened and what was happening I believe that there was not much said about the magnitude of the storm except the excessive amount of flooding and what we had to do to get our place protected.”
Mr. Hunt, an employee of the defendant, was called as a witness by the plaintiff and testified that he went from his home to the power plant and took the generator off the line because of the flooding. He then went up the canal and described the condition thus:
When I got on top of the hill by this Branham house there was hail, I imagine, three inches deep on the north side of the bushes and it had hailed and rained all over on the south side and there was water up around your knees or practically everywhere.
The Branham house was just above plaintiffs’ home.
It thus is clear that the plaintiffs’ place was flooded before anybody had an opportunity to do anything to prevent the water, which flowed in sheets, from the hills, *885from escaping- out of the canal and onto the plaintiffs’ property.
For the reasons stated, I dissent. I would reverse the judgment and remand the case with directions to enter judgment for the defendant for no cause of action.
MAUGHAN, J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Ellett.