4.lunod V Meneses

1.
LUNOD V MENESES
Facts:
1. Higino Meneses is the owner of a fish-pond and a strip of land situated in Paraanan. Without any right or reason,
converted the land in Paraanan into a fishpond and by means of a dam and a bamboo net.
2. On the 14th of March, 1904, Nicolas Lunod, Juan de la Vega, Evaristo Rodriguez, Fernando Marcelo, Esteban Villena,
Benito Litao, Ventura Hernandez, and Casimiro Pantanilla, residents of the town of Bulacan, province of the same name,
filed a written complaint against Higino Menese because Higino’s fish pond prevented the free passage of the water
through said place into the Taliptip River causing damage on the lands of the plaintiffs due to stagnant water.
3. There being no outlet except through the land in Paraanan; the plaintiffs’ plantation were destroyed, causing the loss
and damages to the extent of about P1,000, which loss and damage will continue if the obstructions to the flow of the
water are allowed to remain, preventing its passage through said land and injuring the rice plantations of the plaintiffs.
4.Plantiffs asked for the declaration that the said tract of land in Paraanan is subject to a statutory easement, the
defendant be ordered to remove and destroy the obstructions that impede the passage of the water, that defendant
abstain from closing in any manner the aforesaid tract of land and any other and further equitable or proper remedy in
accordance with the facts alleged and proven.
5.Defendant denies the allegations and alleged that no statutory easement existed nor could exist in favor of the lands
described in the complaint, permitting the waters to flow over the fish pond that he, together with his brothers, owned in
the sitio of Bambang which he and his brothers had inherited from their deceased mother.
6.The lower court rendered judgment declaring that the plaintiffs were entitled to a decision in their favor, and sentenced
the defendant to remove the dam placed on the east of the Paraanan passage on the side of the Taliptip River opposite the
old dam in the barrio of Bambang.
Issue:
WON the lower court erred on its judgement.
Ruling:
No. According to Article 552 of the Civil code “Lower estates must receive the waters which naturally and without the
intervention of man descend from the higher estates, as well as the stone or earth which they carry with them.”
Neither may the owner of the lower estates construct works preventing this easement, nor the one of the higher estate
works preventing this easement, nor the one of the higher estate works increasing the burden. The defendant Meneses
might have constructed the works necessary to make and maintain a fish pond within his own land, but he was always
under the strict and necessary obligation to respect the statutory easement of waters charged upon his property, and had
no right to close the passage and outlet of the waters flowing from the lands of the plaintiffs and the lake of Calalaran into
the Taliptip River. He could not lawfully injure the owners of the dominant estates by obstructing the outlet to the
Taliptip River of the waters flooding the upper lands belonging to the plaintiffs.
Furthermore, according to article 530 of the Civil Code, an easement is charge imposed upon one estate for the benefit of
another estate belonging to a different owner, and the realty in favor of which the easement is established is called the
dominant estate, and the one charged with it the servient estate. The lands of Paraanan being the lower are subject to the
easement of receiving and giving passage to the waters proceeding from the higher lands and the lake of Calalaran; this
easement was not constituted by agreement between the interested parties; it is of a statutory nature, and the law had
imposed it for the common public utility in view of the difference in the altitude of the lands in the barrio Bambang.
Higino Meneses, as the owner of the servient estate, is obliged to give passage to and allow the flow of the waters
descending from the Calalaran Lake and from the land of the plaintiffs through his lands in Paraanan for their discharge
into the Taliptip River.

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