Board of Supervisors v. Carrier Lumber Co.

Citations

• 103 Miss. 324
• 60 So. 326

Syllabus

<p>1. Levees. County supervision. Powers. Causeway. Water and water courses. Chancery. Jurisdiction. Constitution 1890, section 170. Code 1906, section 4449. Irreparable injury. Injunction.</p> <p>While the board of supervisors is invested by section 170 of the Constitution with full jurisdiction over roads and bridges, it is not invested with the power to build levees across natural watercourses whereby the natural flow of the water will be prevented.</p> <p>2. Code 1906, Section 4449. Causeways. Levees.</p> <p>Section 4449, Code 1906, refers to work on causeways. A causeway, however, is different from a levee. It may be necessary in building roads through lowlands to raise the roadbed and when so raised it is known as a'causeway; but even in the case of a causeway going through such lands, when it reaches a bayou, a bridge should be constructed over the bayou for the continuance of the road.</p> <p>3. Water and Watercourses. Chancery. Injunction.</p> <p>The chancery court has jurisdiction to grant an injunction to restrain a person from damming a bayou or other natural outlet, where the injury resulting from such obstruction is manifest and continuous or constantly recurring and the right to relief in the matter is clear.</p> <p>4. Same.</p> <p>While ordinarily the complainant is required to establish the fact of injury by an action at law before a court of equity will interfere, yet where the injury is manifest, the right clear, and the nuisance a continuing one, or constantly recurring and satisfaction can only be had by repeated suits at law, a court of equity is the proper tribunal to relieve.</p> <p>5. Same.</p> <p>Where the owner of land will suffer individual and special damages from overflow caused by the damming of a natural water course he has the right to proceed to abate what might be claimed to be á public nuisance.</p> <p>6. Same.</p> <p>Under our Constitution and laws, neither municipality nor counties, nor the sovereign state itself, can damage the