Stapp

This is an action for damages to real and personal property of plaintiff and his assignors, eight in number. Since 1872, defendant and its predecessors and grantors have appropriated and diverted the waters of the Fresno River and have operated an irrigation system, its intake being situated in said river at a point about two miles northeast of the city of Madera.

The court found:

The damage suffered by each of the assignors of the plaintiff is then set out in similar form and it is found that their claims for damages were assigned to plaintiff before the commencement of the action. It is then found that said damage was not the result of extraordinary and unprecedented storms, nor the result of contributory negligence by plaintiff or his assignors, “but resulted solely from the negligence of the defendant in the maintenance of defendant’s headgate across its main canal.

“10. That at one time the land whereon the plaintiff and all the assignors of plaintiff (excepting Charles W. Kolb, B. Kleckner, and J. N. Kast) reside was a river-bed of the Fresno River, but that no water has flowed from the river therein for a period of more than fifty years until the time of the break . . .…