## Facts

- The Town of Ruston owned and operated a public swimming pool.
- During summer months when the pool was in use, the town emptied the pool about once each week.
- The discharged water ran into a natural drainage ditch (a branch) that drained a large area north of the town.
- The ditch carried the pool water away from the pool, passed under an overpass, and continued across land owned by Adams, a downstream landowner.
- The water from the pool remained within the ditch and did not overflow onto Adams’s land outside the channel.
- Adams claimed the added flow caused the banks of the ditch on his property to cave and wash away, damaging his land.
- Adams sought an injunction to stop the town from emptying pool water into the ditch.
- The town presented testimony from a civil engineer that the pool discharge was small compared to the ditch’s annual flow from rainfall—estimated at about one-tenth of the total annual volume—and that any added damage on Adams’s land was negligible.
- The district court rejected Adams’s request for an injunction and dismissed his suit; Adams appealed to the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

## Issues

1. Whether a municipality may discharge swimming-pool waste water into an existing natural drainage ditch that crosses a downstream owner’s land, when the water stays within the channel and causes at most slight added erosion.
2. Whether a downstream landowner is entitled to injunctive relief when the claimed injury from the added discharge is minimal compared to erosion and flow that occur from natural rainfall drainage.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed the judgment dismissing Adams’s suit and denying an injunction.
- The court found that the town’s use of the natural drain did not place an additional burden on Adams’s land of a kind or degree that justified injunctive relief.
- The court relied on the evidence that the pool water was a relatively small part of the total water naturally carried by the ditch and that any extra erosion attributable to the pool discharge was slight.

## Legal Principles

- Under Louisiana’s civil-law rules on drainage between higher and lower estates, the lower estate must receive surface water that naturally flows from higher land through natural outlets, and the upper owner may make reasonable use of that natural drainage.
- Using an existing natural drainage channel to carry additional water is not, by itself, unlawful; liability and equitable relief depend on whether the use materially increases the burden on the lower estate beyond what the natural servitude already requires.
- Injunctive relief is an extraordinary remedy and generally requires a showing of real and substantial injury; courts may refuse to enjoin conduct that causes only slight damage.
- In deciding whether to issue an injunction, a court may consider the relative hardship: stopping a public facility’s only practical means of discharge may be unjustified when the private landowner’s proven injury is minimal.
- Where the discharge stays within the natural channel and there is no showing the water is noxious or creates a nuisance, a claim based only on minor added erosion may be insufficient for an injunction.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court of Louisiana refused to enjoin Ruston from draining its public swimming pool into a natural drainage ditch that crossed Adams’s land because the discharge remained within the ditch, the added flow was small compared to natural rainfall drainage, and the evidence showed only slight added erosion, making injunctive relief unwarranted.


Adams v. Town of Ruston, 193 So. 688 (1940)