Liimatainen v. St. Louis River Dam & Improvement Company
| Decision Date | 25 October 1912 |
| Docket Number | 17,768 - (63) |
| Citation | 137 N.W. 1099,119 Minn. 238 |
| Parties | JOHN LIIMATAINEN v. ST. LOUIS RIVER DAM & IMPROVEMENT COMPANY |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action in the district court for St. Louis county to recover $900 damages to plaintiff's land alleged to have been caused through defendant's negligent operation of its dam. The answer denied the allegations of the complaint and set up that the action was barred by a former judgment in a similar action between the same parties. The facts are stated in the opinion. The case was tried before Dancer, J., and a jury which returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff for $500. From an order denying defendant's motion for a new trial, it appealed. Reversed.
Maintenance of dam -- former judgment bar to action.
Where the plaintiff, in an action for damages resulting from an overflow caused by the backing up of the water from the defendant's dam, so framed his complaint that he was restricted to proof of certain specific acts as having caused such backing up and overflow, the cause of action was nevertheless predicated upon the defendant's violation of his ultimate duty to so conduct and maintain its dam as not to violate the rights of the plaintiff, whose lands lay further up the river; and hence a judgment in favor of the defendant in such action was a bar to a subsequent action between the same parties for the same relief sought in the former action, though the allegations of the complaint in the second action were sufficiently broad to admit of proof of any and all specific acts or omissions of the defendant in violation of its ultimate obligation to the plaintiff with respect to the maintenance of the dam.
William B. Phelps, for appellant.
Arnold & Pickering, for respondent.
In order that the questions involved in this case may be understood, it is necessary to set out the controlling facts alleged in considerable detail, and also to follow closely the phraseology of the two complaints hereinafter referred to. These facts are as follows:
In September, 1909, the plaintiff brought an action against the defendant, the allegations of the complaint filed therein being, substantially, that for a long time prior to and likewise since January, 1909, he had been in possession of a certain described eighty acres of land in St. Louis county occupied by him as a homestead, and a portion of which was in crop during the season of that year; that prior to July 15 1909, the defendant closed the gates of a certain dam across the said river, which was owned, operated, and maintained by the defendant below the above mentioned land, and stopped the flow of water and caused it to accumulate above the said dam to such extent that it ran over the top thereof, overflowed the banks of the river above the same, and that the defendant caused the water to back up in the river and negligently caused it to overflow the said land, because of the defendant's failure to properly manage and regulate the accumulation of water in the dam, and because the defendant negligently caused an unusual and unsafe quantity of water to accumulate therein and to overflow the banks of the river and run across the adjacent lands; that the waters of the river were wrongfully, negligently, and unlawfully forced out of their natural and usual channel, and caused to flow across the lands so occupied by the plaintiff, thereby injuring his crops, etc., to the damage of the plaintiff in the sum of $750, for which amount judgment was demanded. The defendant answered this complaint, admitting its ownership of the said dam and denying all other allegations. In February, 1910, on the trial of the cause to a jury, a directed verdict in favor of the defendant was returned because of the failure of the plaintiff to establish a cause of action; and subsequently judgment was entered for the defendant on this verdict.
After such verdict the plaintiff brought another action against the defendant, alleging in his complaint that he settled upon the land described in the complaint in the first action, prior to February, 1909, and had since been in possession thereof, the same "being a tract of not more than one hundred and sixty acres, consisting of not more than two distinct tracts of land belonging to the United States on which settlement is not prohibited by the general government," and that he had occupied and cultivated the said land for five years and had made improvements thereon prior to the said date exceeding five hundred dollars in value, and then had growing crops thereon. This complaint further alleged the defendant's ownership, operation and maintenance of a dam across the St. Louis river as in the complaint in the former action, and set out that "during the month of July, 1909, and for a long time prior and subsequent thereto, the defendant negligently and carelessly maintained and operated said dam and negligently and carelessly failed and neglected to exercise proper care and supervision of said dam, whereby large quantities of water from said St. Louis river were, during said month of July, 1909, diverted from the natural course of said river, over, in and upon the land so occupied by the plaintiff as aforesaid and the defendant did thereby trespass upon and completely submerge the cultivated portion thereof," and injured the plaintiff's crops, etc., to the damage of the plaintiff in the sum of $900, for which judgment was demanded.
The defendant answered this complaint in the same form as in the former action, and in addition thereto set up such former action in bar. By way of reply the plaintiff admitted the bringing of the former action involving the property mentioned in the complaint in the second action, but denied that the same cause of action was set forth in both complaints. The cause was tried to a jury and a verdict was returned in favor of the plaintiff for the sum of $500.
On the trial of the cause the court ruled, in effect, that the judgment roll in the former action was irrelevant and inadmissible in evidence, to which ruling the defendant excepted, and, here, having appealed from an order denying its motion for a new trial, assigns such ruling as error. Some other points have been raised, but the determinative and ultimate question involved is the correctness of this ruling, and this in turn depends upon whether the verdict and judgment in the former action is a bar to the instant case.
It is conceded that the transactions referred to and the relief sought in both actions are the same, and the defendant claims that the proceedings had in the first action constitute an estoppel by judgment against the plaintiff in the present action, and that the latter is barred by the proceedings culminating in the judgment rendered in the former action.
One action only lies to redress a single wrong, or, as frequently expressed, a single tort gives rise to a single cause of action, and a plaintiff cannot be permitted to indulge in unnecessary litigation by splitting up a cause of action and prosecuting more than one suit thereon; the penalty imposed by the law for the violation of this rule being the application of the doctrine of res adjudicata, which doctrine is based...
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