Court Opinion

ID: 9662871
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:20:37.925628+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:43.459572
License: Public Domain

HIGGINS, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority, although recognizing that because plaintiffs received a favorable verdict this Court must take plaintiffs’ evidence as true and give plaintiffs the benefit of all favorable inferences arising from the evidence, nevertheless reverses the trial court’s judgment without full consideration of all such evidence in this case. The majority instead, erroneously focuses on the absence of a “finding by the trial court that [defendant’s] development activities ... resulted in a discharge of surface water runoff such as would exceed the capacity of the natural drainway.”
Such focus and its result give short shrift to Rule 73.01 governing review of court-tried eases and the rule of Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d 30 (Mo. banc 1976). Their application and effect were recently enunciated by this Court in Lightner v. Farmers Insurance Company, Inc., 789 S.W.2d 487 (Mo. banc 1990):
Our standard of review on this court-tried issue is governed by the teachings of Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d 30 (Mo. banc 1976). The judgment will be sustained unless there is no substantial evidence to support it or it is against the weight of the evidence; seldom should a judgment be set aside on the ground that it is against the weight of the evidence, and then only with caution and a firm belief that it is wrong. On the record here, we cannot say there is no substantial evidence to support the judgment.
Id. at 489. The majority demonstrates sufficient evidence to support the trial court’s judgment, yet the majority fails to heed and apply the rules. Contrary to the teachings of Murphy, the majority substitutes its judgment for that of the trial court. Because substantial evidence of defendant’s causing the water to exceed the capacity of the plaintiffs’ natural drainway exists in this case, and because Rule 73.-01(a)(2) renders the trial court's lack of such a finding of no import (“All fact issues upon which no specific findings are made shall be considered as having been found in accordance with the result reached.”), the trial court’s judgment for plaintiffs should be affirmed.
Evidence in addition to that recited by the majority is available: Three of the plaintiffs testified that prior to defendant’s development activities the “natural drain-way” that crossed their yards was a small, shallow ditch. Plaintiff Dennis Hansen stated that, prior to defendant’s development, this ditch had “fairly gradual sides to it,” it had “[n]o steep sides to it,” it “fairly conformed to the swale that was in the driveway,” it was “[f]our inches, five inches” deep, and that, after defendant’s development, the ditch is “12 to 15 inches deep” with “fairly steep sided” banks that are “more” steep sided than when he first moved into his home in 1984. Plaintiff Morey Chao testified that, prior to defendant’s development, a heavy rain caused runoff water to cross his yard in a stream “two or three foot wide and about [a] couple inches deep,” and that after a light rain he “hardly could see the water” crossing his yard. Plaintiff Debbie Hansen stated that the most water she had ever observed cross her property in the ditch, prior to defendant’s development, was a stream “six inches wide and less than an inch deep,” that since defendant built his berm and detention basin “[t]here is more water now than at the time the berm was constructed,” and that no runoff water ever stood in her yard before defendant began construction.
Plaintiffs’ testimony showed and described the increased water flow caused by defendant’s development, which not only deepened and widened the ditch but caused the ditch to flood. Plaintiffs’ photographic exhibits graphically depict the flooded ditch that caused the runoff water to inundate their front yards and driveways. Plaintiffs’ expert, Carl Niewoehner, a registered professional engineer, used a “rationale formula” and calculated “an increase of at *77least 297 percent of water” flowing across the plaintiffs’ front yards, caused by defendant’s development. Niewoehner testified that such a water flow through the plaintiffs’ ditch “could be excessive and destructive” and that defendant’s attempt to keep the water flow at the same level as it was prior to his activities (by using a “detention basin” on his land) was “not working.” The trial court’s finding that the runoff water from defendant’s development was excessive and destructive is supported by the judge’s statement in the transcript that the question of whether the water was excessive or destructive had “been asked and answered” because Niewoehner “indicated it was his opinion it was excessive and it could be excessive and destructive.”
Further evidentiary support for the trial court’s decision is found in plaintiffs’ testimony that prior to defendant’s construction no runoff water ever exceeded the ditch’s capacity or inundated their front yards or driveways. Plaintiff Dennis Hansen asserted that he did not “see any evidence of any water damage to [his] property ... before [he] bought it,” and that the difference in his front yard between May 1984 (when he moved in) and May 1985 (after defendant began his development) was that “[t]here ha[d] been erosion, siltation.” Plaintiff Morey Chao testified that he had “never” seen the conditions depicted in plaintiffs’ photographic exhibits (showing plaintiffs’ front yards and driveways inundated with runoff water after defendant’s development began) prior to defendant’s development, that he had never had “any problem not being able to play basketball” in his driveway prior to defendant’s development, and that since defendant began developing he “[has] trouble getting to [his] mailbox” after a rain, his sons have trouble getting “into the house,” his wife has trouble backing her car out of the driveway (the water is “between one and one and a half foot deep”), and his car’s brakes do not function after driving through the flooded driveway (“it takes about two or three miles driving to town and then the brake will start work again”). Chao also testified that before defendant began developing, water did not “ever collect or pool on [his] driveway” and that with regard to any water running across his yard before defendant began its development, it was “[n]ot much” and “[n]ot as much as now.” Plaintiff Debbie Hansen stated that she had never “observed any water in [her] yard or in Mr. Chao’s yard such as is depicted in” plaintiffs’ photographic exhibits, that the post-rain water that now stands in her front yard and driveway causes problems “because the water stands in [her] yard now after it rains and [her child] can’t go outside because it’s too deep,” that no runoff water “ever stood in her yard before construction began,” and that the water that stood in her yard prior to defendant’s construction was “water ... backed up ... from the Merideth branch.” The credibility of all witnesses was for the trial court to judge. Rule 73.01(c)(2).
Thus, substantial evidence and all favorable inferences to be drawn from the evidence in this case support the trial court’s decision even though the witnesses did not use and the judge did not make a specific finding that used the magic words “exceed the capacity of the natural drainway.” When the photographic exhibits of plaintiffs’ flooded yards and driveways were entered into evidence, the trial judge had an abundance of evidence showing that the runoff from defendant’s development exceeded the capacity of plaintiffs’ natural drainway. Under Murphy and Rule 73.01, this Court’s duty is simply to review the evidence to see if its substance supports the trial court’s decision and, if so, to affirm that decision. The majority evades that duty and substitutes its own interpretation and application of the evidence for that made by the trial court. Under the mandated review, the record demonstrates that the plaintiffs made a submissible case, see Looney v. Hindman, 649 S.W.2d 207, 210-11 (Mo. banc 1983), and that the trial court’s judgment thereon is supported by substantial evidence. The judgment for plaintiffs should be affirmed.