This appeal from the water court in Water Division 2 concerns certain rulings relevant to the historic consumptive use quantification of transmountain water rights that are the subject of a change application. The Supreme Court held that the water court erred when it concluded that storage of the water rights on the eastern slope prior to use for their decreed purpose was lawful. The Court concluded that the right to store water in the basin of import prior to use is not an automatic incident of transmountain water rights, but rather, must be reflected, or at least implied, in the decree. Here, the decree is silent with respect to storage of the water on the eastern slope prior to use for supplemental irrigation and, on the facts of this case, the record does not support the water court’s finding of an implied right in the decree for such storage. To the extent that unlawful storage of the water on the eastern slope expanded the decreed rights, such amounts cannot be included in the quantification of those rights.

Because storage of the subject water rights in the basin of import prior to use was unlawful, the water court erred in including the volumes of exported water paid as rental fees for storage on the eastern slope in its historic consumptive use quantification of the water rights. 

Finally, the water court erred in concluding that it was required to exclude the 22 years of undecreed municipal use of the subject water rights from the representative study period. In this case, the undecreed use did not represent expanded use of the decreed right for which an appropriator may not receive credit but rather, 22 years of non-use of the decreed rights. Because unjustified non-use of a decreed right should be considered when quantifying historic consumptive use for purposes of a change application, the water court must determine whether the years of non-use of the rights for their decreed purpose were unjustified. If so, the water court should consider including the years of unjustified non-use in the representative study period as “zero-use” years for purposes of its historic consumptive use analysis. 

The Court reversed the water court’s rulings and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

In this interlocutory appeal, the Supreme Court reviewed the trial court’s order suppressing a firearm that police seized from a vehicle in which defendant was a passenger. The Court concluded that the firearm was discovered during a valid protective search of the vehicle under Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983), given the circumstances confronting the officer at the time of the search. The officer had an articulable and objectively reasonable basis to conduct a protective search of the passenger compartment of the vehicle because (1) the investigatory stop occurred in an area the officer testified was known for frequent criminal activity; (2) defendant appeared to have given the officer a false name; and (3) the officer observed a large knife on the front  floorboard near defendant’s feet when the officer asked him to step out of the vehicle for questioning. The Court further concluded that the officer did not exceed the lawful scope of a protective search by looking behind the driver’s seat because the rear floorboard is an area of sufficient size to conceal a weapon and would have been within the reaching distance of a vehicle occupant.

The trial court’s suppression order was reversed.

The Supreme Court discharged its rule to show cause and affirmed the trial court’s partial denial of defendant American Family Mutual Insurance Company’s request for a protective order to restrict plaintiff’s use of alleged trade secrets. The Court held that American Family failed to meet its burden to show that the documents were in fact trade secrets or other confidential commercial information.