De Baker v. Southern California Railway

The plaintiff in this action is the owner of a large tract of land lying adjacent to and partly within the charter boundaries of the city of Los Angeles. The defendant is a railway corporation, formed by the consolidation of several older corporations, whose properties it has acquired and whose obli *270 gations it has assumed. The Los Angeles river flows through the city of Los Angeles from north to south. Ordinarily it is a small stream, and within the limits of the city is confined to a narrow channel, which sometimes flows in one place and sometimes in another, over a sandy bed about a half mile in width, which is bounded on the east by a well-defined and comparatively high natural bank, and on the west by a bank considerably lower and less plainly defined. Owing, however, to the fact that the river has its sources in the high mountains near the city, it is subject, during the rainy season, to sudden floods, which fill the entire bed of the stream and frequently overflow its banks. Occasionally, at irregular intervals of from two to tw'enty years, during the last fifty years, such floods have reached an extraordinary height, carrying away dwellings and other structures erected…