Court Opinion

ID: 9550647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:39:37.953194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:04.991025
License: Public Domain

UDALL, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I am of the opinion that the majority err in peremptorily prohibiting the respondent court from proceeding to hear the consolidated appeal filed by protestants in this water matter. Admittedly the Beach case, 64 Ariz. 375, 173 P.2d 79, is authority for the action taken; however, it is my view that (1) the Beach decision is bad law and should be overruled rather than followed as a precedent; (2) the law has been changed since that decision by the enactment of section 37-134, A.R.S., which enlarges the right of appeal in such cases.
I submit it is most unrealistic and naive for the majority to say that protestants— who are among the prior appropriators of all available waters — are not “persons adversely affected by the decision” of the commissioner since the permits purport to grant their holders at least a color of right to something which does not exist. To relegate them, as does this decision, to separate court actions to restrain individual permit-tees from using waters already appropriated certainly casts an undue burden upon holders of vested rights as it will result in a multiplicity of suits with its attendant, increased expense. I maintain the legislature intended the above statute would enable *20protestants to easily and quickly “nip in the bud” these claimed embryo rights by a direct appeal to the court, which could cancel permits improvidently granted by the commissioner.
If the state land commissioner had followed the law in the instant case there would have been no occasion for an appeal to the superior court, application for prohibition in this court, nor any later separate actions by protestants. I say this because section 45-143, A.R.S., provides in part:
“Criteria for approval or rejection of applications; restrictions on approval; * * *
“A. The department shall approve applications made in proper form for the appropriation of water for a beneficial use, but when the application or the proposed use conflicts with vested rights, * * * the application shall be rejected.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Had the commissioner examined the records of his own office he would have known that immediately following the adoption of the 1919 State Water Code, Chap. 164, Laws 1919, the very first determination of relative rights thereunder was that made on the “upper Little Colorado River and its tributaries” which was confirmed by a judgment of the superior court of Apache County, dated April 3, 1923. It is common knowledge (as the writer is well aware from 16 years’ experience in administering these decrees) that this decree, coupled with other water decrees of that court, granted — in the order of their priority — rights for more water than has ever been available in said stream. In other words, when the permits in question here were granted there were no unappropriated waters on the Little Colorado River and its tributaries in Apache County, i. e., all rights had theretofore become vested, making this a fully “decreed” stream.
It is apparent from the record that the commissioner, in granting these permits, was largely relying upon an erroneous concept of the law governing priorities for domestic use. Where simultaneous applications are filed, it is true that domestic use is given preference (see section 45-147, A.R.S.), but that does not mean a would-be appropriator of domestic water can come in a half century later, after rights for other purposes have become vested, <md without compensation, take water away from the vested owner merely because he desires to use it for domestic purposes. This is an unheard of and vicious doctrine that I am sure no court would ever uphold.
It is my considered opinion that the commissioner in issuing the permits in question was (a) violating the law, supra, which plainly states applications shall be rejected when the proposed use conflicts with vested rights, (b) fomenting and encouraging needless litigation, and (c) holding out a false hope to these latest permittees, for he knew, or should have known, that in the *21final analysis they cannot hope to benefit by such improvidently issued permits. However, in the meantime these applicants may be misled into making expenditures for projects that will ultimately prove to be worthless.
It is for these reasons that I register this protest and dissent.
PHELPS, J., joins in this dissent.