Smith v. Adams
New York Court of Chancery
This was an appeal from a decree of the vice chancellor of the second circuit. The complainant was the owner of a ten acre lot in the county of Dutchess, upon which there was a cloth dressing establishment and two or three small houses. He was also the owner of another lot of one acre, called the spring lot, adjoining the lands of the defendant, and separated from the ten acre lot by the Dutchess turnpike.
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This was an appeal from a decree of the vice chancellor of the second circuit. The complainant was the owner of a ten acre lot in the county of Dutchess, upon which there was a cloth dressing establishment and two or three small houses. He was also the owner of another lot of one acre, called the spring lot, adjoining the lands of the defendant, and separated from the ten acre lot by the Dutchess turnpike. Upon the spring lot, and only a few feet below the defendant’s line, there issued out of the slate rock from the direction of the defendant’s land a perennial spring; the waters of which,…
1Opinion of the Court
The Chancellor.
I concur with the vice chancellor in the Conclusion that the evidence in this cause establishes a prescriptive right in the complainant to divert a portion of the waters of the Spring from them natural channel across the defendant’s land, in the manner and to the extent that the complainant and those under whom he claims have been in the habit of diverting the same since 1804. In the case of Belknap v. Tremble, (3 Paige’s Rep. 605,) I had occasion to advert to the rule of law on this subject, as correctly laid down by the learned commentator on American law, that the exclusive…
2Cases cited2 opinions
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3Cited by16 opinions
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- Wheatley v. BaughSupreme Court of Pennsylvania · 1855
- Case v. HoffmanWisconsin Supreme Court · 1893
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