Musselshell Ranch Co. v. Joukova
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs, ranches and their owners, owned an irrigation ditch on which they relied to irrigate hay fields for their cattle operation. The ditch ran through Nataliya Joukova's property. The dispute between the parties arose when Joukova placed a culvert in the ditch bottom and built a bridge of rock and gravel across a portion of the ditch for which Plaintiffs had secondary easement rights for ditch maintenance. The district court concluded that the culvert and bridge could remain in place as they did not unreasonably interfere with Plaintiffs' secondary easement rights. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the district court erred in allowing Joukova's culvert and rock bridge to remain in the irrigation ditch as (1) Joukova's construction of a structure permanently blocking use of a portion of Plaintiffs' secondary easement inarguably encroached on the easement, and (2) the law governing easements makes clear that construction of the culvert constituted an unreasonably interference with Plaintiffs' easement rights, for which the statute required Joukova to obtain written permission.
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