Court Opinion

ID: 9564156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:55:20.05027+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:15.184622
License: Public Domain

McCLINTOCK, Justice,
specially concurring.
Insofar as the court reverses the refusal of the district court to consider the injunction phase of plaintiffs’ complaint, I concur without reservation. While I am in similar agreement as to the dismissal of plaintiffs’ first claim seeking to enjoin interference with plaintiffs’ asserted rights in the water which had seeped from his lands and those of his neighbors, I cannot agree that defendant has established a valid water right therein. Notwithstanding the decision of this court in Bower v. Big Horn Canal Association, 77 Wyo. 80, 307 P.2d 593 (1957), I think that there can be no permit legally issued by the state engineer’s office to appropriate seepage and waste waters. I believe that that question was settled in Binning v. Miller, 55 Wyo. 451, 102 P.2d 54 (1940) and that Bower places an improper interpretation upon the earlier case. Insofar as Bower stands as authority for the claim that defendant had a legal permit, which could lead to the establishment of an adjudicated water right, I would declare that it is not the law of this state.
It is said in Binning:
“. . . [Sjeepage water which, if not intercepted, would naturally reach the stream, is just as much a part of the stream as the waters of any tributaries and must be permitted to return thereto, if the owner cannot make beneficial use thereof.” 55 Wyo. at 471, 102 P.2d at 61.
But it is also clear from that opinion that this court took the view that seepage and waste waters, in all respects similar to those involved in the case at bar, are not “public waters,” and therefore no one “has the right to file for the same excepting the owner of the land.” 55 Wyo. at 468, 102 P.2d at 60, quoting from Skinner v. Silver, 158 Ore. 81, 75 P.2d 21, 28. This opinion also quotes with approval this very pertinent passage from Hagerman v. Drainage District, 25 N.Mex. 649, 187 P. 555, 558 (1920):
“ ‘[F]rom the authorities cited it will be seen that only natural waters flowing in stream and watercourses are subject to appropriation; that the creator of an artificial flow of water is the owner of the water so long as it is confined to his property, but that when such artificial waters are deposited in a natural stream and the creator of the flow has lost his dominion over the same, such waters become a part of the waters of the stream, and are subject to appropriation and use, but it is only after such waters reach the stream that they are subject to appropriation and use.’ ” (Emphasis added.) 55 Wyo. at 468, 102 P.2d at 60.
While Binning recognized that from and after 1936 there was a valid water appropriation from what had originally been nothing but a collection of seepage and waste water, this court clearly refused to recognize the right as having priority as of 1906, the year in which the present owner’s predecessor in interest had applied for and received a permit. Recognition of the right as of a later date was based on the finding of the court that between 1906 and 1936 “[t]he continued seepage from Binning’s lands seem[ed] during the course of years to have finally made a regular, natural stream of water near the Glover land.” 102 P.2d at 63.
Notwithstanding the lack of a valid water right in the defendant, I would sustain the holding of the trial court on this phase of the case on the basis of the rule also announced in Binning, 55 Wyo. at 474, 102 P.2d at 62, that
*23“A rule runs throughout the law that he who sues for damages or for interference must show that a legal right has been invaded.”
Plaintiffs have not brought themselves within the rule of recapture because they have not shown that they have recaptured the water before it escaped from the lands for which it had originally been acquired and to which it had been adjudicated, within the rule of United States v. Ide, 8 Cir., 277 F. 373 (1921), aff’d, Ide v. United States, 263 U.S. 497, 44 S.Ct. 182, 68 L.Ed. 407 (1921). Similarly to the defendant, they can claim no valid appropriation of the water.