Jones

Plaintiff on his own behalf and on behalf of his assignors, one and all owners of land in Imperial Valley, brought this action to recover damages for injuries sustained by their lands because of the asserted negligent and unlawful acts of the defendants. Plaintiff recovered judgment and from that judgment and from the order denying its motion for a new trial the defendant Imperial Water Company No. 1, a corporation, has appealed. The controversy cannot be understood without a presentation of facts in most respects remarkable, in some respects unique.

The great Colorado River, draining a large portion of the southwestern United States, and corresponding in, this respect to the Mississippi, leaving the United States on its southerly course passes through northern Mexico and empties its waters into the head of the Gulf of California. In the past ages it has deposited enormous quantities of silt in what was then the upper waters of the Gulf of California, until it finally reclaimed a vast territory from the waters of that gulf. But it did this, not in the usual way of depositing detritus, until new land rose above the level of the ocean, but rather by forming a barrier of high land…