# State Ex Rel. State Game Commission v. Red River Valley Co.

> New Mexico Supreme Court · September 24, 1945 · 51 N.M. 207

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3572750

## Case

- **Full name:** State Ex Rel. State Game Commission v. Red River Valley Co.
- **Court:** New Mexico Supreme Court
- **Decided:** September 24, 1945
- **Citations:** 51 N.M. 207; 182 P.2d 421
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Sadler
- **Judges:** Bickley, Brice, Lujan, Mabry, Sadler
- **Cited by:** 43 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3572750

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding Article XVI, Section 2 of the New Mexico Constitution “is only declaratory of prior existing [New Mexico] law, always the rule and practice under Spanish and Mexican dominion” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)
- holding that “this constitutional provision is only ‘declaratory of prior existing law,’ always the rule and practice under Spanish and Mexican dominion”
- recognizing that appropriation of public waters began as a local mining custom which the United States government was bound to protect
- stating that Congress’s confirmation of Spanish or Mexican land grants did not restrict the State’s regulation of public waters
- stating that prior appropriation has been applied in New Mexico “for some two or three centuries”

## Opinion text

BICKLEY and SADLER, Justices
(dissenting).
The majority, seemingly not quite satisfied to rest the result declared on what was said in their former opinion, have put forward additional grounds considered by them as fortifying the position taken. In -our view, the new matter written in disposing of the motion for rehearing merely represents confusion worse confounded. The extremity to which the majority are driven to find supporting argument is witnessed by the effort to impair what this • court said long ago in Beals v. Ares, 25 N.M. 459 , 185 P. 780 , upon the status of the common law in our jurisprudence, for nearly thirty years regarded as a virtual ■ chart and compass in the field occupied by the common law.
We are satisfied with what we have written in our former dissents. We there pointed out the fallacy in the argument advanced, as well as danger to the security of property rights involved, in the course embarked upon by the majority opinion. It is no answer to say that this invasion of a birthright of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence does not represent the first encroachment. That frequently affords the explanation, .although it furnishes no justification, for the denial of a right long cherished and deemed secure.
We reaffirm our dissent.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3572750. Public record. Not legal advice.