| OCR Text |
Show MISSISSIPPI RIVER LITIGATION 705 Chicago, a corporation of the State of Illinois, it therefore follows that the State, as such, is not interested in the question, and is improperly made a party. We are unable to see the force of this suggestion. * * * The aver- ment and the conceded facts are that the corporation is an agency of the State to do the very things which, according to the theory of the complainant's case, will result in the mischief to be apprehended. It is State action and its results that are complained of. * * * ******* It is further contended that, even if this court has original jurisdic- tion of the subject matter, and even if the respective States have been properly made parties, yet the case made out by the bill does not entitle the State of Missouri to the equitable relief prayed for. This proposition is sought to be maintained by several considera- tions. In the first place, it is urged that the drawing, by artificial means, of the sewage of the City of Chicago into the Mississippi River may or may not become a nuisance to the inhabitants, cities and towns of Missouri; that the injuries apprehended are merely eventual or contingent, and may, in fact, never be inflicted. Can it be gravely contended that there are no preventive remedies, by way of injunction or otherwise, against injuries not inflicted or experienced, but which would appear to be the natural result of acts of the defendant, which he admits or avows it to be his intention to commit? The bill charges that the acts of the defendants, if not restrained, will result in the transportation, by artificial means and through an unnatural channel, of large quantities of undefecated sewage daily, and of accumulated deposits in the harbor of Chicago and in the bed of the Illinois River, which will poison the water supply of the inhabitants of Missouri and injuriously affect that portion of the bed or soil of the Mississippi River which lies within its territory. In such a state of facts, admitted by the demurrer to be true, we do not feel it necessary to enter at large into a discussion of this part of the defendants' contention, but think it sufficient to cite one or two authorities. [The court's discussion of the precedents is omitted.] Our conclusion, therefore, is that the demurrers filed by the respec- tive defendants cannot be sustained. We do not wish to be understood as holding that, in a case like the present one, where the injuries complained of grow out of the prosecution of a public work, authorized by law, a court of equity ought to interpose by way of preliminary or interlocutory injunction, when it is denied by answer that there is any reasonable foundation for the charges contained in the bill. We are dealing with the case of a bill alleging, in explicit terms, that damage and irreparable injury will naturally and necessarily be occasioned by acts of the defendants, and where the defendants have chosen to have their rights disposed of, so far as the present hearing is concerned, upon the assertions of this bill. We fully agree with the contention of defendants' counsel that it is settled that an injunction to restrain a nuisance will issue only in cases where the fact of nuisance is made out upon determinate and satisfactory evidence; that if the evidence be conflicting and the |
