Hall v. Wood, 54546
| Decision Date | 07 December 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 54546,54546 |
| Citation | 443 So.2d 834 |
| Parties | C. Leo HALL, Mary Hall and Randy Lee Hall, Appellants, v. Dr. Eugene G. WOOD, Jr., et al., Appellees. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Russel D. Moore, III, Moore, Royals & Hartung, Jackson, for appellants.
David K. McGowan, Jackson, for appellees.
Before PATTERSON, C.J., and DAN M. LEE and ROBERTSON, JJ.
I.
This is a diffused surface waters case. In 1979 Leo Hall and members of his family purchased and cleared a 20 acre tract of land in southwest Jackson. Almost immediately diffused surface waters flowing across the skinned land began depositing excessive amounts of silt, sediment and pollution into nearby Lake Catherine. Owners of property abutting Lake Catherine have brought suit and the Chancery Court has enjoined the Halls, prohibitorily and manditorily, to cease and correct their pollution and destruction of Lake Catherine.
The Halls have appealed charging primarily that the injunction denies them the use of their property for legitimate purposes. In the context of the facts of this case and the damage caused to Lake Catherine, we hold that the stripping of the Hall lands without taking adequate measures to prevent erosion was not a legitimate use of the Halls' property. Accordingly, with only a modification in form to be explained below, we affirm.
II.
Plaintiffs below and Appellees here are 27 property owners whose lots abut Lake Catherine in southwest Jackson. They are sometimes referred to below as "the Lake Catherine Plaintiffs".
The Defendants below and Appellants here are C. Leo Hall, his wife, Mary Hall, and their son, Randy Lee Hall, each of whom at various times have owned interests in a 20 acre tract northwest of Lake Catherine. At all times C. Leo Hall (hereinafter "Hall") was the dominant actor on behalf of his family's interests in this land.
On January 27, 1979, the Halls acquired this 20 acre tract. At the time it was heavily wooded. Prior to that time, access to and rights in Lake Catherine were a valuable appurtenance to the Plaintiffs' residential properties. Lake Catherine has been a source of recreational and aesthetic enjoyment.
The Halls' 20 acre tract is zoned commercial. Hall acquired it for commercial development purposes. In the summer of 1979 Hall employed land clearers to remove all trees, vegetation and undergrowth. By August of 1979 the land had been completely stripped. The theretofore existing contours of the land were not altered, and no erosion prevention measures were taken at that time.
Hall had been engaged in negotiations with a major retail department store firm. He contemplated a sale of the property to this firm and others for development as a shopping center. Insofar as the record reflects, the tight money economy prevailing in 1979 resulted in the parties with whom Hall was negotiating abandoning their interest in the 20 acre tract in question. Hall was stuck with the property and remains so.
Once the land was stripped the forces of nature went to work, impervious to Hall's economic woes. Diffused surface water sped across the land toward the upper end of Lake Catherine. Silt, sediment and other pollutants began to be deposited in the lake. In the spring of 1980 Hall made an ineffectual attempt to fertilize and seed the property. The erosion continued apace.
Over the last three years, approximately 80 to 100 tons of silt and sediment have been deposited in the upper end of Lake Catherine per acre per year. A mud bar has been created in the northern end of the lake destroying spawning habitat. Suffice it to say that the ecology of the waters of Lake Catherine has been substantially adversely affected. The undisputed culprit is the eastern 12 acres or so of the Hall land, skinned in 1979 but now heavily rutted.
On April 30, 1982, the Lake Catherine Plaintiffs commenced this civil action. In a nutshell they charged that the Halls had been negligent in the use of their adjoining property to the northwest and that this negligence had proximately caused substantial damage to Lake Catherine and their respective property rights therein. The Lake Catherine Plaintiffs further alleged that the damage was continuing. They demanded prohibitory injunctive relief restraining the Halls from any further deposits of silt or sediment into Lake Catherine as well as mandatory injunctive relief that the Halls restore Lake Catherine as nearly as practicable to its former condition. Plaintiffs further demanded monetary damages as well as a lien on the Halls' property to secure their performance of the requested injunctive relief. The Halls denied these allegations and demands for relief.
The matter was tried on its merits on June 21, 1982, in the Chancery Court, First Judicial District, Hinds County, Mississippi.
On August 2, 1982, the Chancery Court released its opinion in substance holding for the Lake Catherine Plaintiffs. The Chancery Court recognized the rule
that any landowner has a right to develop his property and has the right to increase the flow of water [but that] he does not have the right to cause silt to be washed into the lower landowners.
Under that rule, the Halls were found liable.
The trial court then made clear that it
has no intention of trying to spell out exactly what should be done to stop the erosion.
The court's opinion concluded:
The Defendant, Leo Hall, should be required to do whatever is necessary to stop the erosion from land owned by him and his son into Lake Catherine and to proceed forthwith with whatever is necessary. Further, the Defendant, Leo Hall, is directed to remove the silt from Lake Catherine which has been previously eroded into Lake Catherine from his property.
The Plaintiffs have not specifically proved any damage to them but collectively they will be given a lien against the property of the Defendants, Leo Hall and Randy Hall, to guarantee the work. James Winstead will be requested to work with the Defendant, Leo Hall, in connection with stopping the erosion into Lake Catherine and to remove the silt from Lake Catherine.
A final decree was entered September 1, 1982, carrying into effect the forgoing opinion. From that decree, the Halls have perfected this appeal.
III.
We cherish the notion that a person's real property is his to do with as he sees fit, see Andrews v. Lake Serene Property Owners Association, 434 So.2d 1328, 1331, 1333 (Miss.1983), although the complexities and interdependence of today's world have produced not insignificant limitations. Ordinarily the landowner has the right reasonably to improve and use his property for any legitimate purpose. Homes, Inc. v. Anderson, 235 So.2d 680, 683 (Miss.1970).
For these rights to be meaningful, each property owner's use and enjoyment of his property must be shielded from unreasonable interference by others--these "others" ranging from the faceless sovereign to one's next door neighbor. By the same token, how one person uses his property necessarily affects others. These effects may be positive or detrimental. How my neighbor uses his land may enhance or destroy my land's value in use or in exchange, and sometimes both.
Given these realities, our reasoned and intuitive sense of justice demands that each property owner be assured an equal right to the most extensive freedom of use of his property and freedom from interference by others, compatible with an equal freedom of use/freedom from interference on the part of all of one's neighbors. Cf. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 60, 250 (1971). This broad principle of justice as fairness among property owners is the common denominator of the rules of law which have evolved in our cases as will be articulated below.
Our concern in this case is water. Water may be a blessing or a curse to the landowner. Waters provide aesthetic enjoyment. They nourish life. Waters also flood. They erode. Waters impede use and development. They carry pollution, wholly indifferent to its chemical properties or destructive potential.
Waters are thrust upon our lands the enjoyment of which our law protects by a variety of natural processes. The state may make laws and thus create rights guarding the legitimate interests of property owners. Pursuant to the laws of the state, disputes between property owners are heard and adjusted. Waters obey only the laws of physics, principal of which are the laws of gravity. See Lauck v. Gilbert, 252 Miss. 371, 394, 173 So.2d 626, 637 (1965).
In their obedience to physical laws, waters have generated disputes in a variety of factual contexts. Our law has generated general rules which we find applicable without regard to specific factual contexts. The equal maximum right to use/equal maximum freedom from interference principle stated above certainly applies in every context. Historically most litigation concerned natural watercourse disputes. Most of our case law arises in this context. Recently we have heard more and more diffused surface water cases. See Homes, Inc. v. Anderson, 235 So.2d 680 (Miss.1970); see also Comment, Diffused Surface Waters in Mississippi, 46 Miss.L.J. 118 (1975). As recently as 1978 this Court intimated that there might be a difference in principle between the two types of cases. See Warrior, Inc. v. Easterly, 360 So.2d 700, 702 (Miss.1978). Upon reflection, that difference escapes us. By virtue of the general considerations discussed above, the rules and principles found in our case law have force in all waters cases bearing similarities of operative fact.
We emphasize an elementary proposition. Each landowner takes his lands--and their waters--as he finds them, burdens and benefits alike. Where the flow of waters has been rendered by the operation of the laws of physics upon the natural contours of the land, a lower landowner has no rights against his upper neighbor for damages thus caused. Certainly upper landowners may use well established watercourses through lower...
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