Court Opinion

ID: 9686187
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:32:59.482978+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:15.816073
License: Public Domain

BARHAM, Justice
(dissenting).
We are here concerned with the question of whether the plaintiff can maintain a possessory action with the ancillary right to injunctive relief under Code of Civil Procedure Article 3663. We are unable to determine from the record before us the nature of the disputed right to the irrigation canal. We are dealing with an unusual real right not specifically defined by law. If it were a pure servitude, we would very likely be required to determine in a petitory action that the ownership of it could be established only by title and could not be acquired by prescription. See La. Civ.Code Arts. 765, 766. But it is unnecessary to determine the ownership of the right in this possessory action. While it is clear that plaintiff and its ancestors in title have possessed the right for more than 50 years under the belief that they were the owners, I find nothing in the record which would lead me to believe that the defendant ever exercised any acts of possession or quasi-possession with the belief and intent of owning the immovable right until one month before suit was filed. The record does indicate that some of the land upon which the canal lies is owned by defendant, but much of the land which the canal crosses is owned by others. The record establishes simply that the defendant during the rice seasons of 1967 and 1968, by sufferance, used parts of the canal in question to irrigate his rice crop.
The majority here and the Court of Appeal below have both cited Civil Code Article 3432 as the basis for determining the nature of the required possession of incorporeal immovable rights. That article says:
“Possession applies properly only to corporeal things, movable or immovable.
“The possession of incorporeal rights, such as servitudes and other rights of that nature, is only a quasi possession, and is exercised by the species of possession of which these rights are susceptible.” (Emphasis mine.)
The record is replete with evidence that portions of rice canals are not used for the flow of water during periods of two or three years while the ground, once planted in rice and flooded by the canals, lies fallow so that the soil content may be repleted. This has been the custom of rice farmers and irrigation canal operators for many, many years. It is only when the rice crop is rotated back to the plots which have been left unused that the canals are needed again, by the companies for supplying water and by the farmers for flooding their rice fields. Nevertheless the canals are maintained to some extent between the periods of flowage use.
*989The fact that the plaintiff did not use portions of this irrigation canal for water flowage in 1967 and 1968 is of no moment since in those years there were no lands needing water from this canal to flood their rice crop. When the plaintiff company used all the disputed portion of the canal during the entire rice season of 1969, it continued the species of quasi-possession of this incorporeal right by which it had maintained its possession for over 50 years. This use constituted the exercise of that species of possession of which the right was susceptible. Here the right is simply the use of a large ditch which carries water three or four months of some years, does not carry water in the remaining months, and in other years never carries water. I therefore conclude from the facts established and from the express language of the Code that plaintiff has maintained continuous possession for over 50 years, including the one year immediately preceding this suit as required by Article 3449(2) of the Civil Code.
There is no merit in defendant’s claim that he possessed for one year before suit. Possession in law implies a right to enjoy linked to the right of ownership. La.Civ. Code Art. 3434. Although one may possess without being the true owner (Art. 3435), he may not acquire possession unless he has the “intention of possessing as owner” (Art. 3436(1)). “This intention of retaining possession is always supposed, where a contrary intention does not appear decidedly * * La.Civ.Code Art. 3443; see also Art. 3492. One who possesses without color of title or in bad faith must possess as “master”, as owner, in order to disturb the previous possessor or to establish legal possession in himself. La.Civ.Code Art. 3452. For a possessor in bad faith to use civil possession for a continuation of his corporeal possession there must be vestiges of works erected by him. La.Civ.Code Art. 3502. There is no proof that such was the case here, and defendant cannot claim that any civil possession by him continued his two or three months’ activity carried on in 1967 and 1968.
When the law on possession and the possessory action is considered, the natural legal conclusion must be, from the facts in this record, that for the year preceding this suit the plaintiff possessed in the capacity of master and owner and is therefore entitled to maintain the possessory action. Plaintiff possessed in the only manner by which the right of possession could be exercised and to the extent necessary to preserve possession of that particular right. The corporeal acts of the defendant from March to July in 1967 and March to July in 1968 on a portion of the canal were not performed in the belief that he was the owner. It is clear from the record that the defendant meant to possess adversely as owner only when he interfered with plaintiff’s possession just prior to the suit in *9911970. There was no continuous corporeal adverse possession as owner by the defendant in 1967 or 196S; he merely used, without intent to claim as owner, a portion o£ plaintiff’s unneeded and unused canal during those years.
In 1968 plaintiff used the portion of the canal from “A” to “N”, as shown on the plat attached to this dissent, to irrigate Bernard Regan’s property. Defendant claims the use during that year of the canal only from “N” to “Y”. Defendant could not have used the portion "N” to “Y” unless the floodgate at point “N” had been maintained in a closed position by the plaintiff. Plaintiff in fact reconditioned and closed a gate at or near point “N” at the beginning of the 1968 rice season. It cannot be disputed that in 1968 plaintiff fully maintained the canal from “A” to “N”, including the floodgate at point “N”. The building and locking-in of the floodgate at point “N” were necessary to plaintiff’s use of that portion of the canal but also made it possible for the defendant to use the portion “N” to “Y” with his own water'. Defendant made use of this portion ■ simply because it was available and because deficiencies in his own canal work made his canals unusable for irrigation of his land that year. So, even if we assume arguendo that there was an interruption of possession in 1967, plaintiff still possessed for one year prior to the suit by its maintenance of portions of the canal in 1968 and its operational activities in 1969, which were continued through civil acts of possession.
Plaintiff has pleaded estoppel alternatively, arguing that defendant has acquiesced in the canal’s passing over his estate and in the use of it for water flowage. The 1969 use by plaintiff of the canal for water flowage was known by defendant, and he made no objection. This knowledge and acquiescence of defendant do not constitute estoppel; but they buttress, if they do not establish, the finding that defendant’s activities in the previous seasons (1967 and 1968) were not carried on by him as owner but were performed simply in the hope that plaintiff would not interfere with them.
It is not difficult to make a positive determination under the law that the plaintiff has a right to maintain this possessory action and the ancillary injunctive proceedings. However, the real right here considered is of such a special kind that I would be hesitant to resort to laws which did not contemplate this particular right. These irrigation canals, vital to one of the most important agricultural enterprises of Louisiana, have existed in a large area of our state for many, many years with a particular and peculiar quality not assignable to servitudes or other particularized real rights. They have been utilized- in most *993cases without title and by mutual consent of landowners and irrigation companies. Numerous contracts between rice farmers and suppliers of water have been drawn over the years which in many particulars do not meet the legal requirements for title to other real rights. This manner of exercising the right has continued for such a long period that it has become the custom of the place. It is the custom, as previously noted, for these canals to be managed and maintained by companies even though portions of them lie unused during the years when adjacent lands are not planted to rice because of crop rotation or legal allotment of acreage. In the present case every witness testified that the right to use the canal had belonged to and been exercised by the plaintiff, and that it was the custom to contract with the plaintiff when water was needed in particular portions of the canal for irrigation of the rice lands.
Under Civil Code Articles 3 and 21 we are required to look to custom, to natural law and reason, and to received usages when the positive law is silent. Our courts in dealing with another real right, the mineral right, were able to develop law on that subject by resort to custom and through analogy to the law governing other real rights. We cannot and need not decide here the full nature of this particular right or the legal ramifications which are the natural appendages of such a right. We need only determine whether plaintiff has possessed that right as owner sufficiently to maintain its possessory action.
In my opinion this record supports a finding that under the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure plaintiff continually possessed the right to operate the irrigation canal for many years until disturbed in that possession by the defendant’s cutting of the canal levee in April of 1970, shortly before suit, and that therefore the plaintiff’s possession satisfies the requirements for the possessory action of Civil Code Articles 3454, 3455, and 3456 and Code of Civil Procedure Articles 3655, 3658, and 3663. Moreover, when we resort to custom, natural law, and received usages as well as analogy to the law affecting similar rights, it is clear that plaintiff has established its right to maintain that action.
I respectfully dissent.
[See following illustration]

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