Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/109

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The Green Bag.

The present era is the era of rotation. It mestic purposes, and it had to be abandoned. has already numbered eleven Chief-Justices. Held, that Sanderson could claim no damage For those unfamiliar with the State Consti for this. From the opinion : " The water tution of 1874, it may be well to state the which percolated into the shaft was by pow system. Article V. s. 2 : " The Supreme erful engines pumped therefrom, and, as it Court shall consist of seven judges, who was brought to the surface, it passed with shall be elected by the qualified electors of the flow from the tunnel, by an artificial the State at large. They shall hold their watercourse, over the defendant's own land, offices for the term of twenty-one years, if into the Meadow Brook. ... It will be ob they so long behave themselves well, but served that the defendants have done nothing shall not again be eligible. The judge whose to change the character of the water. . . . commission shall first expire, shall be Chief- They have brought nothing on to the land Justice, and thereafter each judge whose artificially. The water as it is poured into commission shall first expire, shall, in turn, Meadow Brook is the water which the mine naturally discharges. . . . The owner can be Chief-Justice." This impersonal scheme of selection has not be held for permitting the natural flow not found universal favor. Chief-Justice of mine water over his own land, . . . which Gibson, as has been seen, did not hold it by the mere force of gravity, naturally, a gain for the Commonwealth, and many and without any fault of the defendants, others entitled to be heard have been of his carried the water into the brook. ... It is opinion. But the step has been taken; and said that the defendants created an artificial watercourse from their mine, but this arti results are now all that it is pertinent to con ficial watercourse was upon their own land. sider. For results that could have a scien tific value, it may well be that sufficient time . . . The plaintiff's grievance is for a mere has not elapsed. Yet it would seem to be personal inconvenience. . . . Mere private partial in a historical survey — even in one personal inconvenience . . . must yield to the so incomplete as this — to select examples necessities ... of a private corporation." from the work of near a century ago, and Gring v. Lerch, 112 Penn. St. 244. Capias in silence waive aside the work of a later in trespass on the case sur promise of mar riage. The nature of the facts precludes day. The following cases fall between the years their appearance here; but as in Overton v. Tyler the phrase concerning promissory 1886 and 1888: — The Pennsylvania Coal Company v. San notes has been often quoted, there occurs derson and Wife, 113 Penn. St. 126. Action a phrase in Gring v. Lerch that has been on the case. Sanderson, the plaintiff in the quoted too : " A man does not court and court below, selected a stream of mountain marry a woman for the mere pleasure of water near which to build his house. The paying for her board and washing." It is purity of the water caused this choice, and a matter of regret that many other sentences from the stream he drew the supply that of this opinion cannot be given. Pennsylvania R. R. Co. v. Lippincott et al., kept his household going. The Coal Com pany then engaged in extensive mining 19 W. N. C. 513. The railroad company operations on land higher up. Into the bought property along the south side of shafts sunk there came water containing Filbert Street in Philadelphia, and built sulphuric acid. This water the company upon it an elevated railroad over which upward of four hundred trains pass six pumped up and out into a ditch, and con veyed away into the brook, which it poi days of the week. Abutting owners on the soned so that no use could be made of the north side brought case to recover dam ages for the depreciation of their various water for cooking or washing, or any do