Higday v. Nickolaus
Kansas City Court of Appeals, Missouri
469 S.W.2d 859 (1971)
Landowners (plaintiffs) farmed land overlying a water basin that supplied their agricultural and personal water needs, while the City of Columbia (defendant), facing a water shortage, acquired overlying land to extract 11.5 million gallons daily for sale to city residents even though the basin's natural daily recharge rate was only 10.5 million gallons. The landowners sued seeking a declaration that the city had no right to extract water for off-site sale and an injunction against the extraction, while the city argued the English common-law rule of absolute ownership of percolating water gave it an unlimited right to withdraw groundwater even if it drained neighboring lands; the trial court dismissed the landowners' suit, and they appealed.
Whether the reasonable-use doctrine prevents an overlying landowner from extracting an unlimited amount of groundwater when the extraction is not for the beneficial enjoyment of the land and diverts all water from neighboring lands.