Miller v. Eastern Railway & Lumber Co.

Citations

• 84 Wash. 31
• 146 P. 171
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 757

Syllabus

<p>Waters and Water Courses — What Constitutes' — 'Streams or Surface Water — Evidence—Sueficiency. In an action for damages for tbe obstruction of waters, causing an overflow of adjoining lands, a finding that the same was a water course, and not surface waters, is sustained where it appears that living and flowing waters from a gulch to the east flow or move to the westward in all seasons and under all conditions, spreading out over and crossing plaintiffs low lands by natural gravitation and finding their way into a water course to the west of plaintiffs lands, which were agricultural lands and easily made dry and fit for cultivation by surface ditches converging toward such water course.</p> <p>Same — Spreading Waters. In such a.case, if the same was not a water course within the common definition of the term, it is a water course in the sense that there is a natural gravitation of living, flowing waters which one proprietor cannot arrest to the damage of his neighbor.</p> <p>Same — Swamp Lands. In such a case, the plaintiffs land was not swamp land, but natural soil over which a water course has spread itself, and the owner had a right to direct the waters in surface ditches over his land.</p> <p>Appeal — Review—Harmless Error — Cured by Verdict. In an action for damages to crops and live stock by the obstruction of a stream and overflowing plaintiffs lands, in which the court instructed the jury that the plaintiff could not recover for loss of live stock if acts of the plaintiff concurred to produce the loss, or if the jury was unable to say which cause produced it, and there was ample evidence to sustain the verdict by reference to damage to crops alone, it is a fair inference that the verdict was based on the loss of crops, and error cannot be predicated on the evidence or instructions relating to the live stock.</p>