Harvey v. Illinois Cent. R.

Citations

• 111 Miss. 835
• 72 So. 273

Syllabus

<p>1. Water and Water Courses. Surface waters. Discharge. Railroad companies.</p> <p>Surface water may be appropriated to his own use by the landowner, or he may expel it from his land, surface water is regarded as a common enemy, which every proprietor may fight or get rid of as best he may; but a landowner has no right to rid his land of surface water by collecting it in artificial channels and discharging it through or upon the land of an adjoining proprietor.</p> <p>2. Surface Waters. Discharge. Railroad companies.</p> <p>Where a defendant railroad, owning a right of way on an embankment over plaintiff’s lands, gained by prescription the right to collect surface waters on one side and discharge it through culverts to the other side, this right being limited to the right exercised during the prescriptive period, the easement thus acquired could not be enlarged to authorize the construction of additional culverts, or an increase of the capacity of those in use, causing damage to plaintiff’s land, by the discharge in a shorter period of the water collected.</p>