Sturtevant v. Ford

• Decision Date: 17 April 1939
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: JOSEPH L. STURTEVANT v. HENRY FORD & others.

303 Mass. 78

20 N.E.2d 496

JOSEPH L. STURTEVANT v. HENRY FORD & others.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

April 17, 1939

October 7, 1938.

Present: FIELD, C.

J., DONAHUE LUMMUS, & DOLAN, JJ.

Water Rights.

A final decree following the decision in Sturtevant v. Ford, 280 Mass. 303 , was reversed and a proper form of decree stated.

BILL IN EQUITY filed in the Superior Court on October 28, 1929.

The decree now appealed from was entered by order of M. Morton, J.

H. C. Thompson, for the defendants. C. H. Baldwin, for the plaintiff.

LUMMUS, J. After the decision and rescript in Sturtevant v. Ford, 280 Mass. 303, a final decree ^[*] was entered on May 2 1938, and from it the defendants appealed to this court. The plaintiff, a lower riparian owner, complained in this suit of a diminution in the flow of water in Hop Brook in Sudbury caused by acts of the defendants, riparian owners above him. Our former decision, besides vacating an award of damages, held that the defendants had not used the waters of the brook unreasonably except in connection with the Carding Mill Pond, a new pond created by the defendants by building a dam near the plaintiff's boundary line. The unreasonable use of that pond consisted in holding back water for no practical purpose, with the result that some of it was lost by evaporation and much of it seeped into a neighboring watershed and never flowed down Hop Brook. The opinion concluded: "If and when a final decree is entered, the relief, so far as injunctive in nature, must be confined exclusively to the Carding Mill Dam and the waters thereby held back, and reference to any and all other dams, gates and works of the defendants must be eliminated."

The defendants, in our opinion, are right in their contention that the final decree purports to require the defendants to provide and supply, from any water anywhere under their control, the amount of water that may be necessary to maintain in Hop Brook a continuous flow of water which shall be equal to four cubic feet a second.

The final decree is reversed. A new final decree of the following tenor is to be entered: -- This cause came on to be further heard upon the matter of the entry of a final decree after rescript from the Supreme Judicial Court, and thereupon, in conformity to said rescript, it is ordered, adjudged and decreed that the defendants and each of them, their agents, servants, and attorneys,...