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79 Pa. 71

Bare v. Hoffman

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided May 20, 1875

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1875-05-20

<p>1. The defendant, during the week of court in which a ease was fixed for trial, moved for a view. Held, that application was nothin time.</p> <p>2. In an action for damages for diverting water the jury might add interest from the date of the damage.</p> <p>3. The defendant and plaintiff were owners of tanneries on opposite sides of the same stream, the defendant being the lower; the plaintiff was owner of land on both sides of the stream below both tanneries. The plaintiff had a dam from which he conducted the water to his tannery; the defendant made a dam below into which the surplus water over plaintiff’s dam flowed; from this dam the defendant, by a pipe conducted the water to his tannery, by which the plaintiff lost the use of the water required to carry the offal from his tannery. Held, that evidence of permanent injury to the market value of plaintiff’s tannery was inadmissible.</p> <p>4. The injury was not of such a character as to assume that it would be permanent and to assess damages accordingly.</p> <p>5. As a general rule successive actions may be brought so long as the obstruction is continued.</p> <p>6. After the bringing of the suit, the defendant removed the pipe which conducted the water from his dam. Held, in an action for the diversion, evidence by the plaintiff of this removal was irrelevant.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-05-20

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently March 1937

9 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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Mr. Justice Mercur.

¶1delivered the opinion of the court, October 12th 1875.

¶2All the errors assigned, except the first and sixteenth, may be considered together. They relate to the measure of damages.

¶3Each party owned and operated a tannery supplied with water from the same stream. Bare also, owned other lands situate on the same stream above the tanneries. On those lands he placed a pipe in the stream, thereby withdrawing a portion of the water from its accustomed channel, and conveying it to his tannery. Hoffman, under a previous grant from Bare, drew the water necessary to supply his tannery, through a pipe placed in the stream above the one put in by Bare. The specific complaint was that Bare took, and failed to return, the water that Hoffman had been accustomed to use, and which he required in carrying away the exhausted tan and offal that accumulated on his premises.

¶4About two months after the water was thus diverted by Bare this action was brought to recover damages.

¶5The defendant in error was permitted, under objection, to give evidence of the permanent injury done to the market value of his tannery by this diversion of the water; and the court charged the jury he was entitled to recover the permanent damages thus done to the freehold.

¶6The whole damage of which the defendant in error complained, was caused by Bare’s placing a pipe in the stream on his own land. A severance of the connection of the pipe with the stream, would cause the water to run in its accustomed channel, and remove the whole cause of complaint. It is not the case of an entry on the land of the defendant in error, and a severance of any part of his freehold; nor of depositing a permanent nuisance thereon, as in Seely v. Alden, 11 P. F. Smith 302. Bare neither took anything off from Hoffman’s land, nor deposited anything thereon. The act he committed was not of such a permanent character as to assume it to continue through all coming time, and to justify the assessment of damages accordingly.

¶7The general rule is that successive actions may be brought as as long as the obstruction is maintained. A recovery in the first action establishes the plaintiff’s right. Subsequent actions are to recover damages for a continuance of the • obstruction. Hoffman was both the owner and the occupier of his tannery. Hence the authorities cited, and the argument made, as to the separate reme*78dies of a tenant and reversioner, do not apply. The whole right was in him. For a continued obstruction to the flow of water he could sustain successive actions. In each he could recover the damages he had sustained subsequently to the last preceding action.

¶8We think, therefore, the learned judge erred in permitting evidence to be given of the permanent injury to the market value of the tannery, and in charging that the defendant in error was entitled to recover the permanent damage done to the freehold.

¶9If the defendant in yrror was entitled to recover for damages which he had sustained prior to the commencement of the suit, he was entitled to them as of that date. We therefore see no error in permitting the jury to compute interest thereon down to the time of the verdict as a mode of arriving at a just compensation. The reason of this is fully sustained by Railroad Co. v. Gesner, 8 Harris 240; Penna. Railroad Co. v. Cooper, 8 P. F. Smith 408; and by D. L. and Western Railroad Co. v. Burson, 11 Id. 869.

¶10The application for a jury to go upon and view the premises, was not made until the week on which the cause was set down for trial, and on the very day it was liable to be tried. It was actually tried on the next day. To have granted the application would therefore have delayed the trial of the cause. It wás not made in time. The court therefore committed no error in refusing it on that ground alone.

¶11The sixteenth assignment is to the admission of evidence showing the plaintiff in error had twice, after suit brought, changed the place where his pipe entered the stream. The object of this evidence is not shown by the record. If those acts were wrongful another action would lie for them. On the argument it was contended that they showed knowledge of the plaintiff in error, that his former act in diverting the water, was wrongful. We are unable to see that they lead, or ought to lead, to any such conclusion. They were calculated to confuse and mislead the jury, and ought not to have been admitted. It is true in Railroad Co. v. McElwee, 17 P. F. Smith 311, where the action was for negligence, it was held that an act done after the injury, might be shown to prove knowledge of the previous unsafe condition of the structure; yet the reason on which it was sustained is inapplicable to the present case. The assignment is therefore sustained.

¶12The defendant in error having collected the judgment by execution, the plaintiff is entitled to an order of restitution : Duncan v. Fitzpatrick, 13 S. & R. 292; Breading v. Blocher, 5 Casey 347.

¶13Therefore, judgment reversed, restitution ordered, and a venire facias de novo awarded.

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