Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

74 N.M. 442

State ex rel. Reynolds v. Lewis

New Mexico Supreme Court

Decided May 4, 1964

New Mexico Supreme Court · decided 1964-05-04

Relies on Sanchez v. Garcia · Renehan v. Lobato · Witt v. Skelly Oil Company

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1964-05-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 22 later decisions — most recently October 2012

22 state decisions

120196419701980199020002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

NOBLE, Justice.

¶1Defendant Lewis has appealed from an order entered in Omnibus Cause Number 20294, Chaves County, by which defendants’ water right in the Roswell Artesian Basin was determined to be for 23.1 acres rather than for 30.3 acres claimed.

¶2 The evidence was heard by a special master, all of whose findings and conclusions, insofar as pertinent to the issues in this appeal, were approved and adopted by the trial court. While the attack here is ■ upon the court’s findings, an appellate court must first review the sufficiency of the evidence to support those made by the master, Witt v. Skelly Oil Company, 71 N.M. 411, 379 P.2d 61. Since the findings by the court and the master are identical, we shall consider the attack, in this case, as though directed to the master’s findings.

¶3The principal challenge is directed to hydrographic survey maps, designated as the “Dallas Survey,” a re-survey map sheet 16, 26-35, and a “resources planning board map.” It is claimed that the facts disclosed by these maps are not substantially supported by the evidence. These hydrographic survey maps were similarly attacked in People ex rel. Reynolds v. Fulton, 74 N.M. 406, 394 P.2d 258, opinion filed April 27, 1964, a similar appeal from the same omnibus cause. The effect of these maps was determined adversely to defendants’ contention in Fulton, and on authority of that decision defendants’ (appellants’) points I and III are without merit.

¶4 A review of the record discloses that findings of fact numbers 3, 9 and 10, .attacked by appellants under point II are supported by substantial evidence; and, under the well-established rule, this court, on appeal, will not disturb such findings. The fact that there may have been contrary evidence which would have supported a different finding does not permit us to weigh the evidence. Sanchez v. Garcia, 72 N.M. 406, 384 P.2d 681; Gladin v. Compton, 72 N.M. 175, 381 P.2d 961. The ■trial court, as trier of the facts, must resolve all conflicts and we are bound by such findings unless they are set aside as unsupported by the evidence. Renehan v. Lobato, 55 N.M. 532, 237 P.2d 100.

¶5It follows that the order appealed from should be affirmed.

¶6It is so ordered.

COMPTON, C. J., and CARMODY, J., concur.
/74/nm/442 · .json · Public domain