16 Cal. 2d 1 - Mogle v. Moore’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

30 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 34 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““First, one has no right to obstruct the flow on to his land of wh'at are technically known as surface waters. [Citing cases.]. But by surface waters are not meant any waters which i,iay be on or moving across the surface of the land withoutibeing collected into a natural watercourse. They or rising thereon in springs. Putting it conversely, they do not include waters flowing out of a natural watercourse, but which yet were once a part of a stream and have escaped from it—flood waters, in other words. [Citing cases.] Second, one has the right to protect himself against flood waters, that is, waters of the character last described, and for that purpose to obstruct their flow on to his land, and this even though such obstruction causes the water to flow on to the land of another. [Citing cases.] Third, one may not obstruct or divert the flow of a natural watercourse. But by a watercourse is not meant the gathering of errant water while passing through a low depression, swale, or gully, but a stream in the real sense, with a definite channel with bed and banks, within which it flows at those times when the streams of the region habitually flow. [Citing cases.]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 61 Cal. App. 2d 432 - McManus v. Otis

2. ““Flood waters are distinguished from surface waters by the fact that the former have broken away from a stream, while the latter have not yet become part of a watercourse. The term ‘flood waters’ is used to indicate waters which escape from a watercourse in great volume and flow over adjoining lands in no regular channel, though the fact that such errant waters make for themselves a temporary channel or follow some natural channel, gully or depression does not affect their character as flood waters or give to the course which they follow the character of a natural watercourse.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 61 Cal. App. 2d 432 - McManus v. Otis

3. “that all the waters so flowing in said channel, flow in a well defined body from a point where they enter said channel at or near the City of Upland, California, to the defendant's property, and that none of said waters once they have reached said channel escape therefrom from the time that they enter therein until they reach the intersection of Comet Avenue and the north line of defendant's property.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Everett v. Davis