Home/Nevada Supreme Court/Doherty v. Pratt

Doherty v. Pratt

34 Nev. 343
CourtNevada Supreme Court
DecidedApril 15, 1912
DocketNo. 1962
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 34 Nev. 343 (Doherty v. Pratt) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nevada Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Doherty v. Pratt, 34 Nev. 343 (Neb. 1912).

Opinion

By the Court,

Norcross, J.:

This is an action for damages for alleged wrongful diversion of water and for an injunction. From a judgment and decree in favor of defendants, and from an order denying plaintiff’s motion for a new trial, plaintiff has appealed.

Plaintiff alleged ownership of certain lands in township 41 north, ranges 54 and 55 east, in Elko County, and a prior appropriation in May, 1900, of a portion of the waters of Woods Creek, a tributary of the North Fork of the Humboldt River, for the irrigation thereof; that subsequent to such appropriation, and for nearly five years thereafter, he continued to irrigate about 170 acres of his said land with the water so appropriated, when the defendants wrongfully diverted the same.

Defendants denied the plaintiff’s alleged appropriation, and denied, on information and belief, that any portion of plaintiff’s lands in excess of about 100 acres are agricultural or have ever been irrigated or cultivated. Defendants further alleged ownership of certain lands in townships 41 and 42 north, and ranges 54 and 55 east, and their several appropriations of all the waters of said Woods Creek made prior to the year 1887 for the irriga-tions thereof. Defendants prayed for a decree that they were the owners and entitled to the first beneficial use of all the waters of said Woods Creek to the extent of 1,100 miner’s inches; that their title thereto be quieted; that the plaintiff be adjudged to have no right or title to said waters, or to divert, appropriate, or use the same; and [345]*345for an injunction against the interference by the plaintiff with such rights.

Defendants offered no evidence, but submitted the case upon the evidence offered by the plaintiff. In support of plaintiff’s case, the testimony of a number of witnesses was taken and a map was introduced in evidence depicting the lands of the parties to the action, and also the lands of others adjacent to said Woods Creek, and showing the location of the water courses and ditches relative to said lands. A copy of a portion of said map, reduced in size, accompanies and is made a part of this opinion for the better undertanding of the questions discussed. [See page 346.]

The decree entered in the action determined: "Third— That the plaintiff, Charles Doherty, has never appropriated, has never acquired, and is not the owner of, any right to use any of the waters of said Woods Creek; he has no title to or interest in the same or any part thereof, and his claim thereto, adverse to the persons entitled to said water, as aforesaid, or to any of them, is unfounded, invalid, and without any right whatever. Fourth — That the right to use eleven cubic feet per second of .the waters of said Woods Creek, measured at a point west of the land of the said George W. Pratt where the ditch called the New South Ditch leaves said' Pratt Creek, and also measured on what is called Pratt’s Ditch just west of said Pratt’s land at the point where the ditches fork, and the ownership of the right to divert a sufficient quantity of the waters of said Woods Creek at the point of location of the dam where said stream diverges from Pratt Creek to reach the point of measurement and supply the quantity of water above stated, to wit, eleven cubic feet per second, be and the same is hereby established, quieted, and confirmed in said defendant George W. Pratt, and in the said persons entitled to the estate of said Catherine West, deceased, in the matter of her estate, subject to the rights of the administrator of her estate pending the administration thereof, as against the adverse claims of said plaintiff; and that said plaintiff, and all persons

[346]

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Bluebook (online)
34 Nev. 343, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/doherty-v-pratt-nev-1912.