Melrose

The appeal in this action is from a judgment for plaintiff in the superior court of Nevada County for $750, based on a complaint which sets forth two causes of action—the first for trespass, in tearing out a certain pipe-line, and the second for conversion by the defendants of the pipe-line so removed. The amount sued for was $14,800, being double the amount of actual damages claimed to have been suffered, the complaint alleging that the trespass was malicious and one with an evil intent to vex, annoy, and injure the plaintiff. The cause was tried before a jury.

This action grows out of a sale of a pipe-line under an execution issued on a judgment entered on the twentieth day of April, 1916, in an action wherein one J. H. Hunt sued the plaintiff’s husband, N. M. Melrose, to recover the sum of $494.23, alleged to be due said Hunt from said Melrose.

The complaint in the present action alleges that the plaintiff was the owner of a water right on Missouri ravine, in Nevada County, and was also the owner of a pipe-line leading from Missouri ravine to Iowa ravine and thence, to a reservoir, and that the defendants had knowledge of this ownership; that within one year preceding the…