Case Study 4 CARVIN vs. ARKANSA POWER AND LIGHT,
14 F.3d 399, 1993 U.S. Court of Appeals for Eighth Circuit
You be the Judge
By: Jenny Wagner
December 23, 2009
Did the easement relieve Arkansas Power and Lights from liability for flooding? Yes, Arkansas Power and Light should not be held liable for damage to property cased by flooding where an easement existed.
In 1923-1947 Arkansas Power and Light (AP&L) constructed several dams on two Arkansas lakes, Hamilton and Catherine. AP & L obtained “flood easements” on property adjoining the lakes. AP&L sold lake side property and kept the easement in force. These flood easements permitted AP&L to “clear of trees, brush, and other obstruction and to submerge by
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Alabama Power Co., 1989).
References
Beatty, J., Samuelson, S. (2009). Introduction to Business Law,, 3rd Edition.
Cengage Advantage Books
Carvin v. Arkansas Power and Light, No. 90-6055, 1991 WL 540481, slip op. at 4-7 (E.D. Ark. Dec. 2, 1991)
Jones v. Scott, 256 Ark. 653, 509 S.W. 2d 831, 833 (1974)
Borders v. Alabama Power Co., 547 So. 2d 446, 447 (Ala.1989).
Ark. Code. Ann. Sec. 15-22-210(1) Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation
HOUSTON GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY; Inez Grant; Morehouse Parish School Board; Horace Mann Insurance Company and Lloyd Gray, Defendants-Appellants-Appellees.
The customers, Charles Ellison and Susan Bresler represented by the Atlanta law firm Strickland Brockington & Lewis sued the Natural Gas Company “under a private right of action in the Gas Act.” The plaintiffs sought to recoup their overpayments charged through the defendant’s violations of the Natural Gas Competition and Deregulation Act (Natural Gas Act). The defendant asked the court to dismiss the case due to the plaintiff’s failure to establish a reasonable claim on which repayment should be given. A trial court granted a motion to dismiss the case, but an
Flooding of the settlement was problematic. By 1812, the settlers had built miles of levees on the banks of the river. For the next two hundred years, the surrounding wetlands were drained to eliminate swamps filled with yellow fever carrying mosquitoes and to encourage economic development. Draining water from peaty soils encouraged subsidence. The land which was just inches above sea level to begin with steadily sank. In combat of this, higher and stronger levees were built, tightening the straight jacket already placed upon the Mississippi River. The massive flooding of 1928 brought further flood control systems implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers with Congressional blessing. By the 1950’s, dramatic rates of land loss in Louisiana’s coastal zone stretched across 300 miles from Texas to Mississippi and inland 50 miles. (Tibbetts)
The State of Colorado has suffered from a water shortage in recent years; a difficult situation which is easily visible when viewing the quickly shortening length of the Colorado River. Lake Mead, for example, is roughly 130 feet lower than it once was, marked by the stained rock which towers above the current water level. “The river has become a perfect symbol of what happens when we ask too much of a limited resource: it disappears. In fact, the Colorado no longer regularly reaches the sea” (Zielinski, 2010). Legislation was implemented early on to address this issue, though the results were (perhaps not surprisingly) rather unanticipated, regarding
Anderson, et al v. Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Superior Court for the County of San Bernardino, Barstow Division, File BCV 00300 (1993)
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In the ¨River Restoration Project Offers a Sprinkling of Hope¨, Ron Jacobsma, general manager of the Friant Water Authority, said “We hope to get double duty out of that water by taking it the long way around.¨ As Jacobsma is a general manager of the Friant water Authority, this offers us his experience, his ideas and his thoughts of how we can have hope for the project. President Barack Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Bill in March, the agreement turned into federal law when he signed it. The parties had been working on the restoration plan for more than two years laying the groundwork for the physical changes to come. When the president signed it, it made them get the approval which he supported for them to continue the process. The credibility of the author right has now been believable because he provided us with the ethics of President Obama and Jacobsma. The river will not necessarily end up to its full, natural path along its entire length. Too much has changed in the decades since the dams construction. They would use canals along some stretches to carry the water short distances and to ferry the salmon upstream. This is showing us logos with facts and information it offers an explanation on how to solve one of the problems with the plan. A professor named Peter Moyole, from UC Davis also had his opinion on the project. He said “We have never done anything on this scale”, but we were willing to try it and approve of the
This case is Azte Inc. v Auto Collection, Inc., 2012 NY Slip Op 51731(Unpublished) [36 Misc. 3d 1238] (US Supreme Court, Kings County, 2012).
Lastly, Mr. Richard A. Kaizer expresses that “Somewhere between the common enemy and natural flow rules is the rule of ‘reasonable flow’” (28). The reasonable use rule or reasonable flow rule allows land owners to divert or change the flow of diffused surface water (“Texas Water Law”). Landowners may divert diffused surface water using by any means possible even to the harming of neighbors lands as long as it
In the third section of John McPhee's Encounters with the Archdruid, the author observes the discourse between conservationist David Brower and Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Floyd Dominy, on the merits of dams in the southwestern United States. Brower "hates all dams, large and small," while Dominy sees dams as essential to our civilization. The Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, which Dominy created, are the main issue of debate between the two men.
When a huge storm caused the Missouri River to overflow in 1993, its water swept through Hardin. Water swept through Hardin,destroying homes and other buildings. Then something terrible happened that the town would never be the same: the dead rose up from the cemetery. It destroyed homes and buildings, and unearthing nearly 600 coffins from the local cemetery. As storm after storm pummeled the Midwestern United States, rivers began to overflow their banks. Throughout the summer, floodwater destroyed homes and businesses, and roads and bridges were washed away. The flooding didn’t and unit fall, and by then, more 20 million acres of land. Fifty people had died, and 55,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
Levees are very helpful in a lot of ways and are needed to have a safe place to live, but they hurt the marshes that surround Louisiana. The levees that surround the Mississippi River are very good at their job and keep the river contained but with the river contained, there is no natural flooding that occurs in the coastal marshes and without the natural flooding, there is no depositing of sediment that replenishes and builds up the marsh. This creates an upset in the balance of land loss and land gained. The subsidence due to the lack of new sediment accounts for 53% of the land loss in Louisiana over the past
The Plaintiffs, Garetsons, own a well in Haskell County, which they use for irrigation pursuant to a vested water right. The Defendant, American Warrior Inc. (AWI), owns two nearby wells with junior water appropriation rights. Garetsons sued AWI requesting an injunction to prevent AWI from pumping groundwater. The District Court found that AWI’s wells were causing significant impairment and drawdown of the Garetsons’ water rights. As a result, tThe District Court granted an
When redirecting storm water flows, property owners are required to collect and direct it to a legal point of discharge. Property owners are obligated to make sure the point of discharge is legal, preferably formally protected by an easement.
The rights of overlying and non-overlying users were redefined by the 1949 court case of the City of Pasadena vs. City of Alhambra (Weatherford et al. 1982). This Supreme Court case established the doctrine of mutual prescription. Prior to this new doctrine appropriative groundwater right holders only had access to excess water that the overlying users did not need, but with the new doctrine “groundwater withdrawals could be judicially limited to safe yield by proportionally reducing the pumping of all parties, using five-year periods of highest continuous use following the beginning of overdraft as the measure for the amount of water to which the reduction would apply” (Weatherford et al. 1982). When groundwater overdraft was experienced, private pumpers would “acquire rights against one another by the continued act of pumping, without regard to seniority or the location of use” (Weatherford et al. 1982). However, this doctrine raised several questions and problems. It was not until the case of City of Los Angeles vs. City of San Fernando, that the doctrine of mutual prescription was limited. This case defined overdraft as “the condition when withdrawals exceed both safe yield and temporary surplus,” but more importantly, it declared that equitable appointment was more important than mutual prescription. In other words, all water rights “must be subject to reasonable conditions and priorities” (Weatherford et al. 1982).