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Show PROPE RTY CHARACTERISTICS 481 transfer." The stock certificate embraces the right to call for the holder's undivided part of the water supply according to the method of distribution.224 The California Supreme Court thus expressed its conclusions as to the relationship of capital stock to water rights of mutual companies holding rights of appropriation of water of the Kaweah River system:225 The capital stock of the foregoing corporations is transferable in the ordinary manner provided by law, and the owners thereof are the equitable owners of that proportion of the properties of each of such corporations which their respective number of the shares of stock thereof bear to the entire subscribed capital stock of the corporation, and as such equitable owners of the properties of the corporation are also equitably entitled to the proportionate distribution of such waters as such corporation acquires by appropriation or otherwise for the various uses for which such waters are acquired. Such stockholders are in that sense and to that extent, but to none other, owners of the water and water rights which the corporation possesses, and over the distribution of which it exercises under general laws and under its particular by-laws full and exclusive control.* * * The stockholders in irrigation corporations of this character, said the court, have a definite right to their proportion of the distribution of such water when so acquired. But no stockholder possesses a legal right to take the quantity of water to which he is entitled by any means other than those supplied by the corporation itself in the exercise of its control over the distribution of such water as is covered by its appropriation, and as is receivable in the quantities and at the points of intake designated in the acquisition of its appropriative rights. It was held that a district that acquired stock in these corporations had no authority to go higher up the river above the companies' regular points of intake and divert its proportion of the aggregate water supply up there. In the majority of western jurisdictions, as heretofore noted, appurtenance of a water right to land is a question of fact, and whether it passes with a conveyance of the land involves questions of both fact and intent of the parties. This appears to be the general rule as well with respect to water rights represented by shares of capital stock in a mutual irrigation company.226 Under certain circumstances, a sale and transfer of the certificate may be made apart from the land for use on other land and will operate to transfer the water right thereto. But if not thus sold or transferred, the water rights and the shares pass as appurtenances with conveyance of the land.227 224 Genola v. Santaquin, 96 Utah 88,101-102, 80 Pac. (2d) 930 (1938). 225Consolidated People's Ditch Co. v. Foothill Ditch Co., 205 Cal. 54, 62-64, 269 Pac. 915 (1928). 226Berg v. Yakima Valley Canal Co., 83 Wash. 451, 455-456, 145 Pac. 619 (1915). 221Pacific States Savings & Loan Corp. v. Schmitt, 103 Fed. (2d) 1002, 1004-1005 (9th Cir. 1939); Berg v. Yakima Valley Canal Co., 83 Wash. 451, 455-456, 145 Pac. 619 (1915). The "mere exchange of one muniment of title to the water right for another [deed for stock] cannot be deemed a severance thereof from the land to which it was 450-486 O - 72 - 33 |