Oklahoma Ry. Co. v. Boyd

1933 OK 642, 28 P.2d 537, 167 Okla. 151, 1933 Okla. LEXIS 51
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedNovember 28, 1933
Docket22188
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 1933 OK 642 (Oklahoma Ry. Co. v. Boyd) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Oklahoma Ry. Co. v. Boyd, 1933 OK 642, 28 P.2d 537, 167 Okla. 151, 1933 Okla. LEXIS 51 (Okla. 1933).

Opinion

McNEILL, J.

This action in tort was commenced in the district court of Canadian county by M. A. Boyd against the defendants, Oklahoma Railway Company and the city of Oklahoma City, on March 4, 1925. Plaintiff alleged damages to her farm resulting from an overflow of her lands caused by the reservoir of Oklahoma City and an embankment of the railway company. Plaintiff alleged that her entire farm was covered with sediment of some kind left by the flood waters, whereby the value of her land was decreased from $250 per acre to the sum of $150 per acre. This court in the case of Oklahoma Railway Company v. Boyd, 140 Okla. 45, 282 P. 157, determined the issues and liability of said defendants, wherein it held that said defendants were jointly liable and the parties in the action at bar agreed to be bound by said decision of this court as to the issues of liability.

The only question for determination in the instant case is the amount of damages to plaintiff’s farm as the result of the flood of 1923. The jury rendered a verdict on June 4, 1930, in the sum of $10,000 in favor of plaintiff. It is from the judgment rendered thereon that defendants have appealed.

It was stipulated by the attorneys for both sides that the case of Woods v. Oklahoma Railway Company and the case of M. A. Boyd v. Oklahoma Railway Company et al., the instant case, both being filed in the district court of Canadian county, should be consolidated for the purposes of trial and tried together before the same jury, with separate verdicts fo be rendered *152 in each case. It was stipulated in part as follows:

“The only question involved to be presented for trial by this jury is the amount of damages, if any, sustained by reason of the overflow during the month of October, 1923.”

The court thus limited the issue to (his question.

Mr. W. H. Boyd, who was called as a witness for plaintiff, testified as (o the silt and sediment, as follows:

“It was an inch to an inch and a half thick. It was soft at the time. It stayed soft until the sun and wind started to dry it, then it gradually began to get hard. After the lapse of time, well, we started to plant the land and it did not mix with the other ground and it would be in chunks. As you would go along plowing and turn over a little bit with the plow and it would look like what we describe as Texas black gumbo or gumbo' land, sticky. * * *
“Yes, sir; that is identically the same. It shows here there is a white substance; after a heavy rain you can go around a plowed field and the white will come to the top of the ground, * * * and it hardens and after a rain it will be very noticeable and harden within a week or ten days after a rain is gone.”

Sir. Bernard also testified on behalf of plaintiff that the land was injured by the deposit of the alkali sediment and that this deposit had a tendency to kill any crop on the land; that the sediment would not mix with the soil, and he further said;

“Q. Do you mean to say that the river brought down that kind of stuff (referring t<- a sample) and just dropped it along t) si land out there? A. All over it like 1hat. * * * A. It has been plowed, but it don't seem to mix with the soil. You can find small particles of the same kind of stuff in the soil, but not as large as that.”

Sir. Kelly testified that there were great ditches cut through the corner of the land and that the land had evidence of silt and mud left upon it by the flood.

The witnesses for plaintiff testified, in substance, that the depreciation of the land was about $100' per acre, while the witnesses produced by the defendants testified that no damages had been sustained.

Defendants contend for the following propositions:

“ (1) Before damages for a permanent injury can be recovered for an overflow of land, it is necessary to prove that the cause of the injury is permanent in character, and not removable by the expenditure of labor or money, or that the injury itself is permanent.
“(2) Where the cause of an overflow is removable by the expenditure of labor and money, or where there is no permanent injury to ‘ the land overflowed, the measure of damages is not the difference between the market value before the overflow and ihe market value immediately after, but instead the measure is the damages accruing on account of the impaired or lost use up to the time of the commencement of the action.’’

It is the theory of defendants that the damages caused to plaintiff’s land by the overflow were temporary and not permanent, and that plaintiff failed to prove a permanent injury to her land. Defendants insist that their testimony showed that the land was as good as it ever was from a physical standpoint, and that it was growing crops and that they were as good if not better than they were prior to the time of the flood.

We consider it unnecessary to enter into a discussion of the abatableness of the cause of the damages to plaintiff’s land. Plaintiff’s proof was directed to the permanent injury to the land in question. The court confined the proof to that issue without apparent objection on behalf of the defendants.

Instruction No. 12 was as follows:

“You are further instructed that the measure of damages in this case is the difference between the fair market value of said lands immediately prior to the flood of October, 1923, and the fair market value of said lands immediately thereafter, if any.”

Instruction No. 4 of the court submitted the following:

“So, the sole and only question that is left for you to determine is the damages that plaintiffs, or either of them, sustained to their lands, if any, by reason of the flood of October, 1923.”

No exception was made to this instruction. During the course of the oral argument, the court gave an oral instruction without objection thereto by counsel for defendants, as follows:

“The Court: I will say this further, gentlemen : You will add nothing, that is, you will not undertake to consider any damages to the buildings and to the alfalfa separate and distinct from the land, but all those things will simply go to whatever damage, if there was any, to the land itself, and must only be considered with reference to the actual damage to the land. * * *
*153 “The Court: That is true. All you can look to those things for is in determining the amount of damages actually to the land, they are just simply circumstances and conditions you may look to in determining what, in your judgment, the damage to the land is, if any.”

Mr. Fogg, o.ne of the attorneys of the defendant, stated to. the court in the presence of the jury, as follows:

“The measure of damages on that was what the land was worth before and after.”

This statement of counsel followed a statement of the court, to- wit:

“I think he may show the average production of the farm before the flood and what the production was thereafter.”

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Bluebook (online)
1933 OK 642, 28 P.2d 537, 167 Okla. 151, 1933 Okla. LEXIS 51, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oklahoma-ry-co-v-boyd-okla-1933.