IMPORTANT MINING DECISION

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 62, 17 April 1869, Page 6

IMPORTANT MINING DECISION

The following was the judgment delivered by his Honor Judge Grrey in the District Court, Naseby, on the 10th ult.

"White and others (appellants) v. Nichol, Bampson and others (respondents). — In this appeal, heard at the January sitting of the Court, and in which the Judge had reserved judgment, judgment was now given. The appeal was from a decision of Mr. Warden Eobinson and assessors. Respondents had been plaintiffs below.

Plaiutiffs below were owners of a water right, by which they were entitled to divert water from the Little Kyeburn Creek, at a point in tho mountains not very far from its source. Defendants were owners of a sluicing claim still higher vp — about a mile and a half distant from the part at which plaintiffs took their water, and situated up one of the tributaries of the creek. The fall from this sluicing claim to the defendant's race was very steep; probably 1200 feet in the mile and a half. PlantifFs had complained against defendants for damaging plaintiffs water race by negligently allowing tailings from their claim' to run into plaintiffs water race. The assessors had found for the plaintiffs £3 damages, but recommended to the Warden, that no process should issue to stop defendants workings. The Judge, in now giving judgment, said that he considered the meaning of this verdict was that the assessors considered an injury had been done by plaintiffs, that it was not at that moment great in amount, that it was of a character to be compensated by damages without any necessity for immediate restraint upon defendants' workings, and that the determination of the right in the action would probably lead to an arrangement between the parties as to their mode of working. His Honor said that he concurred in this view of the jury. At the request of the parties ho had visited the ground. The injury to the water race consisted of a deposit of stuff carried down from the defendants' claim, and accumulated at the mouth of the race. At the hearing of the appeal defendants had taken very strong grounds; they insisted upon the right of sluicers to the use of all the rivers and water-courses of the country as tail races, into which they were entitled, under the Groldfields Act, to discharge all their tailings. With, this contention he could not agree. He thought the utmost defendants could claim was this— that, being themselves entitled to divert water from other water-sheds, bring it to their claim and there use it for mining purposes, they were also entitled to discharge the water in the new water-shed to which they had carried it, after they had used it for mining purposes. They might contend that the very nature of its use in mining purposes necessarily loaded it more or less with matter held in suspension, and which could not readily precipitate ; and so far as the injury to the defendants arose from tlie ultimate precipitation of such matter, he would say that it might be argued with considerable force that plaintiffs could not be accountable ; but it was not necessary for him to decide this in the present case. He had at the request of the parties visited the ground, and did find that no small portion of the stuff deposited in the race did consist of this fine sedimentary matter. It was this which induced him to hold the matter for so long a time under consideration before he gave judgment. ' The stuff sluiced down was from a hill composed in a great measure of very fine quartz sand. Much, of the sand deposited in the race was almost as fine as flour, and no doubt had taken some time to precipitate ; but a considerable quantity of the deposit consisted of coarser matter, something much more than the mere soil of water discharged after it had done its mining work. It had also been argued for the defendants that their claim, being nearly two miles distant from the plaintiffs' water race, they should not be held, accountable for injury caused by works so remote. But mere distance did not necessarily make remoteness. " The descent along the channel was in this case so steep that he must regard the discharge of tailings into the upper part of the creek as almost equivalent to an immediate discharge into that lower portion of it from which plaintiffs derived their, water. He would affirm the decision of the Warden and assessors ; but he considered the case a fair one for appeal and he wonld, therefore' leave each party to pay his own costs on the appeal. — " Mount Ida Chronicle."

Three hundred glasses of brandy were consumed during the month of February by six patients in the Kilmore Hospital, Victoria, besides a quantity of wine and sixty pints of ale or porter. A committee has been appointed to enquire into the matter. A New Yobk paper says :" — Queen Olga of Greece walks the streets of Athens with her baby in her arms, stops and talks with all the mpthers she meets, and compares babies with them.

One of Bishop Blomfield's latest bon mots was uttered during his last illness. He enquired what had been the subject of his two archdeacons' charges, and was told that one was on the art of making sermons, and the other on churchyards. "Oh, I see," said the Bishop, "composition and decomposition."