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Show SPECIAL STATUTORY ADJUDICATION PROCEDURES 475 specified, as to each appropriation concerning which testimony was offered, the source, point of diversion, location of storage works, purpose, priority date, and amount of water.195 Certain permissable alternative classifications were specified in the statute for numbering the priorities awarded.196 With respect to supplemental adjudications, the act provided that, regardless of the dates of appropriation:197 In case a prior decree has been rendered by the court in any adjudication fixing irrigation or nonirrigation priorities from the same source, each priority adjudicated shall be junior and inferior to those theretofore adjudicated, and the decree shall so indicate as to each such junior priority which bears a date earlier than the latest priority date awarded in the last prior adjudication. This provision meant, as stated by one author, that:198 [A]ny appropriation or priority decreed in a supplemental proceeding is subject to all rights decreed in any previous adjudication proceeding. For example, an adjudication proceeding in a certain water district may have been held in the year 1882. X Ditch Company may have a water right initiated in 1870. But X Ditch Company may have neglected to have its rights adjudicated in the adjudication proceeding held in 1882. The non-adjudication of X Ditch Company's rights does not destroy X Ditch Company's water right. The failure to appear in the adjudication proceeding and have its claim adjudicated merely subordinates its rights to a position junior to all rights which were adjudicated in that proceeding. Let us assume that in 1905 a supplemental adjudica- tion proceeding was held in the same water district, and X Ditch Company filed its claim and had its right adjudicated. Although the supplemental decree may very properly find that X Ditch Company's appropriation was initiated in 1870, nevertheless X Ditch Company's priority number in order of time will be subsequent to all rights which were adjudicated in the prior adjudication proceeding, although the date of initiation of many of the appropriations decreed in the original proceeding may be subsequent in time to the initiation of X Ditch Company's appropriation. In a recent case, the Colorado Supreme Court said, "We are presently well ingrained with the proposition that, no matter how early an appropriation date may be in a later decree, it has a lower priority than a much later appropriation date contained in an earlier decree."199 i95Id. §§ 148-9-11 to 148-9-13. 196Id. § 148-9-14. 197Id. § 148-9-13(3). 198Chilson, supra note 161, at 87. 199Luis Coppa & Son v. Kuiper, 171 Colo. 315, 467 Pac. (2d) 273, 276 (1970). See also, with respect to similar former legislation, Huerfano Valley Ditch & Reservoir Co. v. |
