East Jordan Irrigation Co. v. Morgan

I respectfully dissent. The majority holds that a shareholder in a mutual water corporation does not have the right to change his or her point of diversion because the water rights are owned by the company rather than the shareholder. In so holding, the majority makes a number of crucial errors. First, the majority improperly treats water like an ordinary corporate asset and assumes that mutual water companies are the same as other corporations. The majority further ignores long-established Utah case law holding that mutual water corporations may not interfere with a shareholder’s use of his…