Meyer v. Somerville Water Co.

• Decision Date: 24 January 1914
• Citation: 82 N.J.Eq. 572,89 A. 545
• Parties: MEYER et al. v. SOMERVILLE WATER CO. et al.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

89 A. 545

82 N.J.Eq. 572

MEYER et al.

v. SOMERVILLE WATER CO. et al.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

Jan. 24, 1914.

Suit by Bernhard Meyer and others against the Somerville Water Company and others. On demurrer to bill. Demurrer sustained, and bill dismissed.

See, also, 79 N.J.Eq. 613, 82 Atl. 915.

Edward P. Johnson, Jr., of Somerville, and Collins & Corbin, of Jersey City, for complainants. Clarence E. Case, of Somerville, Frederic J. Faulks, of Newark, and John A. Frech, of Somerville, for defendants.

BACKES, V. C. The defendant Somerville Water Company is supplying water to Raritan and Somerville, and to residents along certain roads leading from these towns. The water is obtained from the Raritan river at Puritan, of which the complainants are lower riparian owners. The average flow of the river during nine months of the year is about 250,000,000 gallons per day, and the low-water flow is 61,000,000 gallons. At a point about three miles above the defendant's works, the river is dammed, and the water diverted into the canal of the Raritan Water Power Company, which extends down to the defendant's plant, and supplies various factories with power. The capacity of the canal is equal to the ordinary flow of the river, which is eventually restored to the bed at and above the defendant's pumping station. The defendant withdraws approximately 2,000,000 gallons of water per day to supply Raritan and Somerville. On May 1, 1907, a four-party contract was entered into by the Somerville Water Company, Piscataway Water Company, Raritan Township Water Company, and Elizabethtown Water Company, wherein it is recited, "Whereas the said Somerville Water Company is the owner of a large supply of pure and potable water, and is desirous of selling such water to the extent hereinafter provided," and whereby the defendant agreed to furnish and supply to the Piscataway Company at a point (not fixed) in the boundary line between the township of Bridgewater and the township of Piscataway (boundary line between Somerset and Middlesex counties), pure and potable water, of a quantity to be regulated by the requirements of the Piscataway Company, which requirements included the obligation imposed upon that company by the contract to in turn furnish water to the Raritan Company, but which "shall not at any time exceed such quantity of water as the said Somerville Company may lawfully draw from its present or future sources of supply, less such quantity as the Somerville Company may, from time to time, require to supply water to the said towns of Somerville and Raritan, and the inhabitants thereof, and shall not at any time exceed twenty million (20,000,000) gallons a day." Subject to the above limitation, the Piscataway Company agreed to deliver to the Raritan Company not more than 19,000,000 gallons a day, and the Raritan Company agreed to furnish to the Elizabethtown Company not less than 18,000,000 gallons a day. Each company was, at its own cost, to lay mains within its territory for conveying the water, the delivery of which was to begin on the 1st day of January, 1909, and to continue for 99 years. The four companies are owned or controlled by a single interest, and managed by boards of interlocking directors. Avowedly for the purpose of fulfilling its part of the contract, the defendant, in 1910, laid a 36-inch main from its pumping station, skirting Raritan, to Somerville, in all about 5,600 feet, when it was stopped by the authorities of that municipality. Somerville Water Co. v. Somerville, 78 N.J.Eq. (8 Buch.) 199, 78 Atl. 793. This main is now being used as an auxiliary to the defendant's Somerville water system. Some of the other companies have laid complementary mains, as required of them by the contract. The defendant obtained from the board of freeholders of Somerset county permission to lay its main in an improved or state road, to a point near Bound Brook, and there was pending before that body at the time the bill was filed an application to extend this permission from thence to the county line. On March 14 and 16, 1911 (the bill was filed March 23d), the complainants gave notice in writing to the defendant of their rights as riparian owners, and cautioned it against taking or diverting any of the waters of the river above their property, other than was necessary and proper for the use of Raritan and Somerville, and not to enlarge its pipes or plant, or to do or cause or permit to be done any acts or work looking to such taking or diversion. The defendant, in its answer, and by its officers and other witnesses at the hearing, and through its counsel, in argument, concedes the complainant's usufructuary rights in the waters of the river, as asserted by them in their bill, and protests that it never had claimed nor now claims to have any right therein (except for supplying Somerville and Raritan), or that it has any purpose or ever had any purpose of taking any of the waters to fulfill the four-party contract, without first acquiring, as against the complainants, a right so to do either by purchase or condemnation. Upon this state of facts, and because of alleged nonexistence of corporate powers in the defendant, to which I shall presently allude, the complainants claim that they are entitled to the protection of this court against an invasion of their riparian rights by the defendant, and ask that such invasion and the further laying of the 36-inch main or the laying of any mains in Somerville or Raritan, disproportionate to the needs of these towns for 30 years to come, be perpetually restrained, and in their brief insist upon the removal of the mains already laid to insure absolute security.

1. The evidence does not show that the defendant's acts threatened an imperilment of the complainants' property, or that the complainants were reasonably apprehensive that they would. The enormous outlay of money by the four companies in constructing the 36-inch main, before first acquiring a water supply or right thereto from the lower riparian owners and from the state through the Water Supply Commission (4 C. S. 1910, p. 5798) was at their hazard. It may have been an unwise and possibly a reckless venture; but it was undertaken in subordination to the terms of the contract which expressly stipulated that the water which the defendant agreed to sell to its cocontractors was to be only such as could be lawfully taken from its present or future sources of supply, and of this the complainants had ample information. The laying of the main, considered in the light of the contract, spelled a lawful enterprise, and far from indicated an intent to wrongfully invade the complainants' rights. There was at the time of the filing of the bill no obscurity concerning these rights. They had been clearly defined and established by this court and the Court of Appeals in Paterson v. East Jersey Water Co., 74 N.J.Eq. (4 Buch.) 49, 70 Atl. 472; 77 N.J.Eq. (7 Buch.) 588, 78 Atl. 1134; Wilson, Atty. Gen., v. East Jersey Water Co., 78 N.J.Eq. (8 Buch.) 329, 79 Atl. 440. This, and the notice given by the complainants to the defendant of their property in the river, and the implied forewarning that they purposed to protect it against intrusion, evinces that both parties were keenly sensed of the other's legal rights, and it is to be assumed that the defendant meant to respect those of the complainants. There is no evidence of an expressed threat by the defendant, and the record is silent as to what response, if any, it made to the written notification. No declaration of its intention was sought by the complainants before coming into court.

In this situation the law presumes a policy of lawful conduct on the part of the defendant toward the complainants, and coupled with the defendant's unqualified disavowal and disclaimer of any rights in the water of the river, other than for supplying Raritan and Somerville; its emphatic and unequivocal denial of any intent, past, present, or future, to take these waters without lawful right first acquired from the complainants by purchase, or against them by condemnation, manifestly renders interference by injunction inappropriate at this time. The denials and disclaimers were made by the president, treasurer, and a director of the defendant—gentlemen of high standing, good repute, and unimpeached integrity.

Where a defendant asserts positively that it is not his intention to do a certain act or to infringe a certain right, and there is no evidence to show any intention on his part to do the act or infringe the right, the court will not interfere. Kerr on Injunction, *13; Whalen v. Dalashmutt, 59 Md. 250. The court is not...