Sullivan v. Sullivan Power Co.
Sullivan v. Sullivan Power Co.
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
Appellant’s statement: “This action was commenced in 1917, and tried at the November term of the Court of Common Pleas for Laurens county, before Judge T. J. Mauldin, and a jury, and resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff of $800. The action was for damages to a tract of land owned by the plaintiff for backwater. The land was owned from July, 1911, until June, 1913, by T. Q. Sullivan, the husband of the plaintiff, and from that time until November, 1913, by Milford & Brock, and from then until the trial and since by the plaintiff. A part of this tract, containing 217 acres, more or less, situated on Horse Creek, about one mile or one and a quarter miles above the site of the defendant’s dam and power plant at Tumbling Shoals, on Reedy River, in Laurens county, consisted of bottom land. It was alleged that this land was in cultivation prior to the time when the defendant made its development and ponded the waters in Reedy River. The complaint also alleged that the prior owners of the land had transferred and assigned their interest in airy claim for damages to the tract of land to the plaintiff. The answer of the defendant was a general denial.
“On the trial of the cause the plaintiff offered evidence to prove all the material allegations of her complaint. This evidence tended to show ownership of the tract, the number of acres in the bottoms on Horse Creek, the portion thereof which was flooded by backwater, and the other alleged injuries thereto, the kind of crops harvested therefrom and the uses made of the land otherwise, and the date when the defendant commenced to erect its dam and develop the shoals. Work on the dam was commenced in the fall of 1911, and it was not completed until about December, 1912. *284 This was testified to by plaintiff’s witnesses, as well as by the defendant’s. T. Q. Sullivan, husband of the plaintiff, testified that the dam was completed in the fall of 1912. W. D. Sullivan, Jr., testified that the dam was not closed until 1913. J. P. Harney, a witness for the defendant, testified that the dam was closed in the winter of 1912, in December, and permanently closed in the spring of 1913. It was undisputed that the plaintiff’s tract of land was something like a mile or more above the site of the defendant’s dam on Plorse Creek, a tributary of Reedy River.”
The plaintiff alleged that she had taken an assignment of her predecessor’s right of action for damages. No question is made as to the validity of that assignment. The plaintiff, therefore, must be treated as the owner of the land from commencement of the erection of the dam. His Honor charged the jury that the measure of damages was the difference in the value of the land before and after the erection of the dam, if there was a loss in value caused by the erection of the dam. ■ The appellant claim that his Honor should have said “immediately before.” If that statement was misleading, and we do not think it was, then the appellant should have requested the modification. The exception cannot be sustained.
2. The second exception complains of error in not granting a new trial on account of the alleged error in exception No. 1. We have just seen that there was no reversible error. This exception cannot be sustained.
The judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- 1. Trial—Instructions—Reciuests.—In the absence of a requested mod iñcation, a charge that damages to land by the erection of a dam is the value before and after the erection will not be deemed misleading, because it failed to say “immediately before.” 2. Waters and Watercourses—Dams—Injury to Lands—Instructions. —A charge that the damages to land by the erection of the dam is the value before and after the erection is not objectionable as allowing damages for loss of crops.