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Show PRESCRIPTION 415 Court said that "a right to use water which is lost by prescription or adverse user is in effect a passing of such water right from the original appropriator to the adverse user."826 [Emphasis added.] But the California Supreme Court has said that this is a new title, which can be held by a corporation as well as by an individual.827 The loss of a water right by reason of adverse use of the water on the part of another for the statutory prescriptive period coincides with the acquisition of a right to the use of that water by the adverse party.828 In a case cited frequently with respect to prescriptive rights to the use of water in Texas, the Texas Supreme Court held that claimants had connected themselves with any prescriptive claims of their predecessors in title by means of the deeds to their lands. It was not denied that the deeds would have passed matured prescriptive rights appurtenant to the lands, any more than it would be denied that the inchoate title or claim of an adverse possessor, without lawful right, would pass by his deed to the land possessed. It seemed manifest, said the court, that it could not be the intent of the grantor and grantee that the grantor's deed to land together with all rights and appurtenances thereto should not pass that which the grantor claimed as an appurtenant right to the land.829 Re/at/on to Appropriative and Riparian Rights in California In the earlier discussion, under "Character of Water Rights Affected-Rights Subject to Loss by Prescription," some of the facets of prescriptive losses of appropriative and riparian rights are discussed. Owing to the important role that both major doctrines have had in California and the extensive amount of litigation in the high courts concerning them, it is appropriate to emphasize, at this point, some of the interdoctrinal relationships of prescriptive, appropria- tive, and riparian rights as they have developed in that State. Classification of rights. -Although prescriptive rights are sometimes listed with appropriative and riparian rights as though the California law of watercourses comprised a threefold, rather than a dual, system of water rights-or listed with appropriative and overlying (ground water) rights where percolating ground waters are involved-in the author's opinion it is doubtful that the California decisions actually support such a classification. A prescriptive right often may be applicable to only a part of another's water right. (See "Measure of the Prescriptive Right-Part of Invaded Right Only," infra.) In that event, only the title to that part of the right is affected. *MIn re Drainage Area of Bear River in Rich County, 12 Utah (2d) 1, 361 Pac. (2d) 407 (1961). ™Alhambra Addition Water Co. v. Richardson, 72 Cal. 598, 608-609, 14 Pac. 379 (1887); Montecito Valley Water Co. v. Santa Barbara, 144 Cal. 578, 594, 77 Pac. 1113 (1904). 828 Regarding this and related matters, see "Basis of the Prescriptive Right-Coincidence of Loss and Acquisition of Water Right." ™Mdrtin v.Burr, 111 Tex. 57, 67, 228 S.W. 543 (1921). |