Bounds v. Carner

205 P.2d 216, 53 N.M. 234
CourtNew Mexico Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 25, 1949
DocketNo. 5126.
StatusPublished
Cited by34 cases

This text of 205 P.2d 216 (Bounds v. Carner) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Mexico Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bounds v. Carner, 205 P.2d 216, 53 N.M. 234 (N.M. 1949).

Opinion

BRICE, Chief Justice.

This action was brought by plaintiffs (appellees) to have adjudicated the rights of the parties and others, to the use of water flowing in the Peñasco River and Wills Canyon, a tributary thereof; and to have decreed that defendants (appellants) and others and their agents, etc., be enjoined from using water, the right to the use of which, it is alleged, is in the plaintiff Bernie Bounds, and by him leased to plaintiffs. The case was dismissed as to all defendants except J. J. Carner, I. N. Bounds, Lita Poison and Shelby Davis (who will hereafter be styled defendants) against whom a decree was entered adjudging that plaintiffs are entitled to the use of water to irrigate 15.40 acres of land as lessees of Bernie Bounds; that defendants were using all or a part of this water to plaintiffs’ injury, by reason of which they should be, and were, enjoined from, such use except for domestic purposes. From this decree the defendants have appealed.

The findings of fact entered by the court are not attacked, except by the following assignment of error, and argument thereunder :

“The court erred in finding that ghelby Davis interfered in the use of water of Wills Canyon by the appellees.”

The defendants requested the trial court to make fourteen separate findings of fact, all of which were refused. No errors were assigned because of such refusal. It follows that the facts found by the trial court are the facts upon which the case must be tried here insofar as they apply to defendants, except Davis. They will be binding on Davis unless wc conclude that there is no substantial evidence to support the finding attacked by him. The findings of the trial court, unless stricken, are the facts upon which the case must rest in this court. In re White’s Estate, 41 N.M. 631, 73 P.2d 316; Krametbauer v. McDonald, 44 N.M. 473, 104 P.2d 900.

The substance of the material facts found by the trial court are as follows:

The plaintiffs are partners doing business under the firm name of Bernie Bounds and Company. The plaintiff Bounds owns certain lands to which a water right is appurtenant. By a decree of the United States District Court for the state of New Mexico, entered May 6, 1933, in Cause No. 712, entitled “The United States of America v. Hope Community Ditch et al.,” initiated in the year 1920, and hereafter referred to as the “Federal suit”, it was, among other things, adjudged and decreed that the Southwest Lumber Co., plaintiff Bound’s predecessor in title, had a vested right, with priority of 1883, to divert water from the Peñasco River and Wills Canyon, a tributary thereof, for the proper irrigation of 15.40 acres of land now owned by plaintiff Bounds, with a maximum water duty of three acre feet per annum per acre, delivered on the land. This decree was effective as of June 15, 1931. That since that date the water right so established and decreed has been exercised by the owners by the application of water to a beneficial use, to the extent that the water was available. The streams mentioned are natural water courses; and the waters thereof were subject to appropriation, and were appropriated as such and •so applied by plaintiff Bounds and his predecessor in title.

The purpose of the Federal suit mentioned was, among other things, to adjudicate the rights of the parties thereto to the use of the water flowing in the Pecos stream system, including its tributaries; among which is the Peñasco River and its tributary Wills Canyon. In that suit the defendants Lita- Poison (then Lita Bounds), Shelby Davis, G. P. McShan, predecessor in interest of J. J. Carner defendant here, and Frank Weems, predecessor in interest of I. N. Bounds defendant here, were defendants. The defendants Lita Poison and Weems were duly served with process but did not answer in the Federal suit. The defendants Shelby Davis and McShan filed answers therein. The decree mentioned adjudicated the water rights for and against each and every defendant named therein; also fixed and determined the water rights of each of the several defendants having any, as against the water rights of the plaintiff and of each and all of the defendants.

There was adjudicated to the Southwest Lumber Company, predecessor in interest of plaintiffs, water sufficient to irrigate 15.40 acres of land from the Peñasco River and Wills Canyon, a tributary thereof, and fixed the maximum water duty at three acre feet per annum per acre of irrigated land, delivered on the land.

No water right in or to the waters mentioned was adjudicated as being vested in the defendants, or either of them, or to any of his, her, or their predecessors in title. The evidence does not disclose that either of these defendants acquired any water right since the effective date of the Federal court decree. It .does not appear from the evidence that prior to the year of 1945 the use of the water of the Peñasco River or Wills Canyon by the defendants, or any of them, impaired or interfered with the use of plaintiffs’ adjudicated water rights; but during that year and since, their use has interfered with the plaintiffs and their appropriated water.

The defendants are reputed to own lands adjacent to the Peñasco River or Wills Canyon, situated about the point, or points, of diversion for the use of water on plaintiffs’ lands.

The defendants, prior to 1945 and up to the time of the filing of this suit, had been, and were, diverting the waters of the Peñasco River and Wills Canyon for the irrigation of portions of their lands, notwithstanding written protests and notices to desist. In the years of 1945 and 1946 the waters of the streams mentioned decreased materially, so that the diversion of the waters therefrom by the defendants had deprived, and was depriving, plaintiffs of the quantity of water to which they were entitled under their appropriation, and such shortage had continued to exist, until the trial of this suit.

Such diversion of water by defendants during 1945 and since has interfered with the use and enjoyment of the water appropriated to plaintiffs, and is still so doing.

None of the defendants is shown by the evidence to have acquired, or to now hold, a valid water right in or to any of the water of the Peñasco River and Wills Canyon.

From the facts found, the trial court concluded that Bernie Bounds was the owner of certain lands described in plaintiffs’ complaint, to which was appurtenant a “duly adjudicated, valid and subsisting water right to irrigate 15.40 acres thereof, as adjudicated by the United States District court in said cause.” (The Federal suit.) That the decree therein is binding on the defendants and is res adjudicata as to them, and each of them. None of the defendants was granted, or adjudged to be entitled to, a water right in the Federal suit, and since the entry of the decree therein none of them has acquired a valid water right in or to the waters of the Peñasco River or Wills Canyon, by prescription or adverse user. None of the defendants is the owner or holder of a valid water right in the waters of the Peñasco River or Wills Canyon.

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Bluebook (online)
205 P.2d 216, 53 N.M. 234, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bounds-v-carner-nm-1949.