Weideroder v. Mace

111 N.E. 5, 184 Ind. 242, 1916 Ind. LEXIS 109
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 11, 1916
DocketNo. 22,926
StatusPublished
Cited by14 cases

This text of 111 N.E. 5 (Weideroder v. Mace) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Weideroder v. Mace, 111 N.E. 5, 184 Ind. 242, 1916 Ind. LEXIS 109 (Ind. 1916).

Opinion

Spencer, J.

Suit by appellee to restrain and enjoin appellant from collecting surface water upon the latter’s farm and easting the same onto the land of appellee by means of an artificial tile drain; also to recover damages for injury previously done to appellee’s land and to crops grown thereon. Trial, finding and judgment in favor of appellee.

The complaint, in substance, alleges tha1¿ appellant and appellee are the owners respectively of certain tracts of land described therein; that a public highway runs east and west along the line of the north side of appellee’s land and on the south side of appellant’s land, thus separating the two farms; that appellant has from year to year during four years just past gathered by means of ditches and tiling surface water from ponds and bayous and cast the same in a body down along the south line of his land in large quantities in certain seasons of the year; that in the year 1908, and at divers times since, appellant wrongfully, unlawfully and without right, entered on appellee’s land a¡nd cut an open [245]*245ditch, and tiled through the highway, for some distance over the line of appellee’s land and has continued to keep open and maintain a tile ditch or drain and has by means thereof east all of said accumulated body of water in large quantities upon appellee’s land, thus hindering the proper farming of said land. The complaint further charges that the ditch through the highway thus made by appellant had been filled up by the road supervisor and others but that appellant persistently and frequently reopened the same without the consent of appellee, thereby easting the overflow of water onto appellee’s land and leaving the same there to become stagnant and to accumulate until, dried up by natural evaporation and absorption, all to appellee’s great and irreparable damage and injury. Further allegations charge injury to the crops previously grown on appellee’s land.

Appellant filed a general denial and six paragraphs of affirmative answer. The' third paragraph proceeded on the theory that the prayer of appellee’s complaint should be denied for the reason that his land lies and is situated on a lower level than that of appellant, and that there is a “natural and well, defined channel” which leads from appellant’s land to said lower level of appellee’s land; that said “channel” is the natural and necessary outlet for the surface water on appellant’s land, and that appellant has merely collected the surface water occasioned by rain and snow falling on his land, and then drained the same into said “natural and well defined channel” which carried the water to a lower elevation; that the face- of the country in the vicinity of appellant’s said land is such as necessarily collects on said land in one body, so large a body of water, after heavy rains and the- melting of large bodies of snow, as to require an outlet to [246]*246some reservoir; that such water is now and has been from time to time immemorial regularly discharged through a “well defined channel” which the force of the water has made for it, but which has been filled up and obstructed at divers times within the last seven years by appellee and others at his instance and request; that appellant has done no more than to remove said obstructions from the channel and otherwise to facilitate the flow of said water.

1. A demurrer to this paragraph for want of facts was overruled, whereupon appellee moved to strike it from the files. The motion was sustained and this action of the trial court is questioned by appellant’s assignment of errors the contention being that a motion to strike out is not a proper method of testing the sufficiency of a pleading, for the reason that if sustained it deprives the pleader of an opportunity to amend. Moorhouse v. Kunkalman (1912), 177 Ind. 471, 481, 96 N. E. 600, and cases cited. Appellee does not question the above rule as a general proposition but insists that this case falls within the further rule, equally well settled, that where a special paragraph of answer amounts only to a general denial, which is already pleaded, or where several pleas are substantially the same, the court may, on motion, set aside all of them except one. Williams v. Port (1860), 14 Ind. 569; Jackson v. Yandes (1845), 7 Blackf. 526; Lomax v. Bailey (1845), 7 Blackf. 599. This assertion is based on appellee’s contention that the third and fourth paragraphs of appellant’s answer were, in legal effect, substantially the same, and that one of them, therefore,- was properly rejected on motion. The general phraseology of the two paragraphs is very similar, with the exception that in the fourth paragraph the expression “natural and well defined watercourse” is used instead of [247]*247“natural and well defined channel,” and with the further exception that the averments which are italicized in our statement of the third paragraph do not appear in the fourth. Appellant insists that the latter averments distinguish the two paragraphs, it being his contention that he “had not only his surface water to burden, but an additional body of water which had by force created a well defined <- channel to care for itself, over plaintiff and defendant, and plaintiff was seeking to deprive defendant of his rightful relief for such involuntary additional burden.” Appellant’s position is not tenable. The averments to which special attention is directed served only to state with greater particularity the charge contained in the fourth paragraph of answer that appellee was seeking to interfere with a natural outlet for the surface water which accumulated on appellant’s land. This charge, if well founded, was provable under the fourth paragraph of answer and appellant was in no way injured by the sustaining of appellee’s motion to strike out. We need not pass on the soundness of the decision in Taylor v. Fickas (1878), 64 Ind. 167, 176, 31 Am. Rep. 114, for that case does not support the position taken by appellant nor is it in conflict with the conclusion reached in this ease. Indeed, such a channel as is described in appellant’s third paragraph of answer is there held to be a “watercourse.”

2. [248]*2483. [247]*247Appellant next insists that the trial court erred in sustaining a demurrer to his amended fifth paragraph of answer. Neither the text of this demurrer nor its substance is set out in appel- . lant’s brief and it is not to be found in the record. The rule is too well settled to require citation of authority that under such circumstances no issue is properly presented as to the ruling in question. The burden rested on appellant to see [248]*248that the record contained a complete and aecurate transcript of so 'much of the proceedings below as should be sufficient properly to present to this court the alleged errors of whieh he complained.

4. Appellant’s motion for a new trial first contains the usual grounds that the decision of the court is « not sustained by sufficient evidence and that it is contrary to law.

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Bluebook (online)
111 N.E. 5, 184 Ind. 242, 1916 Ind. LEXIS 109, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/weideroder-v-mace-ind-1916.