Davis v. Hambrick

• Decision Date: 06 June 1921
• Docket Number: 21829
• Citation: 125 Miss. 859,88 So. 511
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: DAVIS, FEDERAL AGENT, et al. v. HAMBRICK, et al

88 So. 511

125 Miss. 859

DAVIS, FEDERAL AGENT, et al. v. HAMBRICK, et al

No. 21829

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 6, 1921

WATERS AND WATER COURSES. Evidence held insufficient to sustain judgment against railroad company 'for flooding lands by filling in trestle.

In a suit against a railroad company for damages to growing crops caused by filling in a portion of a trestle over a stream and thereby obstructing the flow of the flood waters of the stream, so as to cause the waters to be impounded on the lands of plaintiff to an increased depth, and to remain on the land longer than they would if the trestle had not been filled, where the undisputed testimony shows that there was an excessive rainfall and several extraordinary overflows which flooded the entire valley of the stream, both above and below the railroad embankment, a judgment for plaintiff will be reversed, where there is no testimony which would enable the jury to separate the damages attributable to the wrongful act of the railroad company from that caused by the excessive rains on the crops and the consequent flooding of the land independent of the trestle.

HON. C P. LONG, Judge.

APPEAL from circuit of Lee county, HON. C. P. LONG, Judge.

Separate actions by A. C. Hambrick and Will Perry and by said Hambrick and Sam Westmoreland against James C. Davis, Federal Agent and the Mobile & Ohio Railroad Company. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendants appeal. Reversed and remanded.

Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.

J. M. Boone and W. D. Anderson, for appellants.

Rankin & Finley, for appellees.

No brief found in the record for either side.

OPINION

WILLIAM H. COOK, J.

A. C Hambrick was the owner of certain lands situated in Town Creek valley, in Lee county, and the track of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad crosses this valley. The railroad track runs north and south, and at the place where it crosses Town Creek there was formerly at a trestle about three hundred feet long; but in May, 1919, the railroad company filled in more than two hundred feet of this trestle. During the year 1919 Will Perry and Sam Westmoreland were tenants on Hambrick's land, and each cultivated about twelve acres of the land which was west of the railroad track. Hambrick and Perry instituted a suit for damages against the Mobile & Ohio Railroad Company and the Director General of Railroads, averring that there was a natural drainage of the land west of the railroad...