Pista

This is an appeal from a judgment awarding damages for injury to a fruit crop.

Appellant operates a plant in the Salinas Valley, California, where dolomite ore is calcined. Located within a distance of a mile from the plant is appellees’ apricot orchard. In 1943, during the blossoming or pollination period of the fruit, dust discharged from the stacks of appellant’s plant settled over the surrounding terrain within a radius of approximately three miles from the plant. Appellees sought damages on the ground that the dustfall interfered with the pollination of the fruit, thereby causing or contributing to the shortness of the ensuing crop. The trial court found that as a proximate result of the dustfall the yield of the orchard was 133 tons less of apricots than it otherwise would have been.

Appellant insisted and still argues here that the damage to the crop was caused solely by poor weather conditions, it being a conceded fact that bad weather prevailing in California during the pollination season in 1943 contributed everywhere to the production of an unusually short apricot crop. There was, however, a very substantial showing that the dust from appellant’s plant contained…