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41 Conn. 156

Grant v. Allen

Supreme Court of Connecticut

Decided February 15, 1874

Supreme Court of Connecticut · decided 1874-02-15

Trespass qu. cl. fr., brought to the Court of Common Picas for the county of Hartford, and tried to the jury on the general issue, with notice, before Briscoe, J. On the trial it appeared that the plaintiff and defendants were the owners of adjoining lots in the city of Hartford, and had been since and for sometime before the autumn of 1872, the plaintiff occupying as a residence a dwelling house upon his lot, located about eight feet from the division line.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-02-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently December 1980

7 state decisions

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Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Pardee, J.

¶1The right of the owner of land to determine the manner in which he will use it, or the mode in which he will enjoy it, the same being lawful, is too high in character to be affected by considerations growing out of the retention, diversion, or repulsion of mere surface water, the result of falling rain or melting snow.

¶2There being in the case before us no grant, express or implied, and no stipulation between the parties concerning the mode in which their respective parcels of land shall be occupied and improved, the defendants could not enter upon the plaintiff’s land without his consent, place additional earth upon it, change the grade and burden it with a barrier for the diversion of such water from their own land. He could not compel them to receive it, they could, not compel him to *161withhold it. Earle v. De Hart, 1 Beasley, 280; Gammon v. Hargadon, 10 Allen, 110; Luther v. Winnisimmet Ferry, 9 Cush., 174; Flagg v. Worcester, 13 Gray, 601; Dickinson v. Worcester, 7 Allen, 19.

¶3A new trial is not advised.

¶4In this opinion the other judges concurred.

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