Fisher

This is an action for damages claimed to have resulted from the defendant's widening of one of its irrigation canals. This canal had existed for many years prior to 1933 through and across farm property owned by the plaintiffs.

This canal formerly belonged to the Palo Verde Mutual Water Company, which was formed in 1908. The defendant irrigation district was formed in 1923, and shortly thereafter it acquired the facilities and rights of the Palo Verde Mutual Water Company. By 1933, as a result of the depression, a very large part of the property in the district was delinquent both as to county taxes and district assessments. In 1934, pursuant to what was then section 3897d of the Political Code, the governing boards of the defendant district and of Riverside County approved a “Rehabilitation Plan” providing in brief that the district would acquire the county and state title to tax-deeded property in the district on certain terms, and then would offer the same for sale to former owners on certain terms; that where the property had been deeded to the state the transaction would be handled as a sale; and that where the property was not yet deeded to the state it would be handled as…