## Facts

- Sewall and Janice Maddocks owned land adjacent to Elbridge Giles’s gravel pit.
- The Maddocks property had no residence but was historically supplied by an underground spring producing large quantities of water.
- The Maddockses alleged Giles’s excavation and dewatering of the gravel pit caused their spring to run dry.
- The Maddockses’ expert acknowledged groundwater under Giles’s land was presumed percolating, but contended percolating water may function as a watercourse if it has a general flow and predictable course.
- Giles’s expert testified the source was percolating groundwater, not a watercourse with definable sides or bed, and asserted underground watercourses are not found in Maine’s typical geology.
- After an earlier appeal reinstated the complaint, the case was tried to a jury with a special verdict requiring an initial finding whether the spring was fed by an underground watercourse.
- The jury found Giles did not interfere with an underground watercourse benefitting the Maddocks property, and judgment entered for Giles.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred by instructing the jury on Maine’s absolute dominion rule governing percolating groundwater.
2. Whether Maine should abandon the absolute dominion rule and adopt a different groundwater doctrine (such as reasonable use or correlative rights).

## Decision

- The Law Court affirmed the judgment for Giles.
- The Court held the jury instructions properly stated Maine law on percolating groundwater and properly framed the threshold watercourse question.
- The Court declined to replace the absolute dominion rule, emphasizing its long-standing status and concluding the record did not justify a common-law shift.

## Legal Principles

- Groundwater beneath land is presumed to be percolating; interference with percolating groundwater is generally not actionable under Maine’s absolute dominion rule when the land use is lawful.
- A landowner may be liable for disrupting a legally cognizable watercourse to the injury of neighboring landowners; liability turns on proof that a watercourse (not merely percolating groundwater) exists and was interfered with.
- When a jury finds no interference with an underground watercourse, claims based on depletion of percolating groundwater are foreclosed by the absolute dominion rule.
- Long-settled common-law rules are not displaced absent a strong showing that the rule is unworkable or unjust, or that a replacement doctrine is clearly warranted.

## Conclusion

Maine reaffirmed the absolute dominion rule for percolating groundwater and upheld a defense verdict because the factfinder rejected the plaintiffs’ attempt to characterize the spring’s source as an underground watercourse, leaving no basis for liability based on groundwater depletion from lawful excavation.


Maddocks v. Giles, 728 A.2d 150 (Me. 1999)