Baruh

Plaintiffs recovered a judgment, after a jury verdict, for $20,500 compensatory and $5,000 punitive damages against defendant Kuhl for the malicious and intentional flooding of a rice crop. The theory of plaintiffs’ case was that defendant had first filled a duck lake on his land to, or beyond, capacity, and had then released the water therefrom onto plaintiffs’ lands, defendant’s motive being spite. Defendant’s principal contention on appeal is the insufficiency of the evidence to support the judgment.

Appellant’s briefs, however, seem designed to obtain a reweighing of the evidence by this court. Accepting, instead, our obligation to state the evidence with its reasonable inferences in a light most favorable to the party prevailing in the court below and to affirm if such statement shows substantial evidence to support the jury’s verdict (Crawford v. Southern Pac. Co., 3 Cal.2d 427, 429 [ 45 P.2d 183 ]), we find the following evidence in the record:

Water to fill Kuhl’s lake can come from two available sources: one, lateral F of Maxwell Irrigation District which enters Kuhl’s property near the northwest corner. The second source of water is from a pump located in the southwest…