Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad D/B/A Canadian Pacific v. Iowa District Court for Louisa County

HECHT, Justice.

An injunction was issued by judgment in 1977 against the owner of a railroad right-of-way directing it to reconstruct a dike designed to channel creek water under the railroad’s bridge and away from adjacent farmland. Nearly forty years later, a drainage district that was joined as a defendant in the earlier .litigation asked the district court to hold a subsequent purchaser of the right-of-way in contempt for willfully violating the injunction. The district court found the subsequent purchaser in contempt for failing to reconstruct and maintain the dike. In this certiorari…