Craig v. Borough of Shippensburg

Citations

• 7 Pa. Super. 526
• 1898 Pa. Super. LEXIS 336

Syllabus

<p>Waters and water rights — Diversion of stream, by borough — Rights of riparian owners.</p> <p>A borough has no right to divert a stream to the injury of lower riparian owners, for the purpose of supplying its inhabitants with water without making compensation to the persons injured.</p> <p>Diversion of ivaters — Measure of damages.</p> <p>Where the effect of damming a stream by a borough in order to supply its citizens with water, works deprivation to a lower riparian owner of the stream by causing said stream to dry up for several months in the year and by reason of affecting also a spring owned by such riparian owner, the court cannot instruct the jury that they can only find nominal damages, there being evidence of inconvenience and loss resulting from the drying up of the stream and spring and some evidence of connection between the springand the stream.</p> <p>Waters and water rights — Spring—Natural percolation — Question for jury.</p> <p>The ordinary rule that a man is not responsible when in the natural use of his own land, he interferes with the natural percolation of water through his soil, thereby affecting a spring on another man’s land, does not apply where the diversion of a stream is the gravamen of the action, and the destruction of the spring is the necessarily resulting injury to a lower riparian owner from such diversion of the stream. And where there is some testimony that would seem to indicate that irrespective of natural conditions the spring always becomes dry whenever the flow of the stream is shut off, and is at once supplied when the stream resumes its flow, a strong probability arises that there is some connection between the two, and the question of resulting damages and the relation of the spring and the stream is for the jury.</p>