Hayward v. Knapp

• Decision Date: 22 March 1877
• Citation: 23 Minn. 430
• Parties: ANTHONY J. HAYWARD <I>vs.</I> JOHN H. KNAPP and others.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

23 Minn. 430

ANTHONY J. HAYWARD vs. JOHN H. KNAPP and others.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

March 22, 1877.

Appeal by defendants from an order of the district court for Dakota county, L. M. Brown, J., presiding, (sitting for the judge of the first district,) refusing a new trial, after verdict for plaintiff. A former appeal in the same action is reported, 22 Minn. 5.

Wilson & Taylor, for appellants.

William H. Yale, for respondent.

GILFILLAN, C. J.

Action for damages done to a brail of logs belonging to plaintiff, moored at the shore of the Mississippi river, by a raft of logs which defendants, by means of a steamboat, were floating down the river, and which ran into and broke up the brail. The case comes here on a bill of exceptions, presenting a great many exceptions, and a great many points are made on them here. They can all be disposed of, however, by a comparatively few propositions, without going over them all in detail.

It appears that plaintiff, who was a manufacturer of lumber at the city of Winona, floated the brail down the river, to a point about three miles above his mill at Winona, where he made it fast to the bank of the river, and left it there, intending to permit it to remain until he should sell it, or wish to manufacture it into lumber at his mill, and that it remained there ten days before it was struck by defendants' raft. There was a general verdict for plaintiff, and, in answer to special interrogatories, the jury found that there was no want of ordinary care on the part of plaintiff in leaving the brail where it lay, under the circumstances disclosed by the evidence, and that the brail lay partly in the channel of the river. How much it lay in the channel, whether enough to be an obstruction to navigation, was not found, nor is it disclosed by the statement of what the evidence was.

Upon this state of the case the defendants insist that the tying up of plaintiff's brail, at the place, and for the purposes, and for the time stated, was wrongful; that the brail constituted a nuisance; and that, consequently, plaintiff cannot recover for damages to the brail, caused by mere negligence of defendants in navigating the river. As the jury have discharged the plaintiff of actual negligence, the question is presented whether, as a matter of law, the brail, in the place it lay, was a nuisance. It is not found — and, as the evidence is not all before us, we cannot say it was established — that the brail was an actual obstruction to navigation, or that the place where it was moored was an unreasonable one, or that it was left for an unreasonable time. The only facts which we can consider are that it was moored to the bank of the river for about ten days, to enable the plaintiff to sell it, or determine to manufacture the logs into lumber, and that it, to some extent — though whether to any material extent we cannot say — lay in the channel.

The Mississippi river is a public highway for the purposes of navigation by whatever the interests of commerce, and the wants of the people in the territory through which it passes, require should be floated on its surface. The right to navigate it applies as well to rafts of logs as to vessels, and covers the entire navigable part of it. Whoever unnecessarily obstructs passage along it is guilty of a nuisance. But the right of navigation includes, as incidental to its beneficial enjoyment, the right, in a reasonable manner, and for reasonable periods, to stop and occupy, to the exclusion of others, particular parts of or locations in the river. Thus, vessels have not merely the right of passage, but the right to land and remain at the shore such times, and in such places, as may be reasonably necessary for loading, unloading, and...