Water Rights—Postponement Doctrine—Priority.

These appeals concern a dispute over competing rights to irrigation tail and waste water that collects in a borrow ditch. The Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a driveway that interrupts the flow of water in the ditch renders the sections of borrow ditch on either side of the driveway separate sources of water for purposes of the postponement doctrine.

The Court held that because the water that collects in the sections of the borrow ditch at issue here generally derives from irrigation of the same fields and because the water routinely overflows the driveway and rejoins the ditch on its northward course, the water in the ditch on either side of the driveway constitutes the same source. The postponement doctrine therefore applies to determine the relative priorities of the applicants’ competing rights. Under that doctrine, the applicants who filed their application in an earlier calendar year are entitled to the senior rights. The Court therefore reversed the water court’s judgment and remanded these cases with directions to revise the applicants’ decrees consistent with this opinion.

Fourth Amendment—Voluntary Nature in General—Validity of Consent.

This case principally required the Supreme Court to decide whether defendant’s federal and state constitutional rights were violated when a law enforcement officer required him to submit to a pat-down search before providing a consensual ride in the officer’s police car. The Court concluded that when defendant accepted the officer’s offer of a courtesy ride in the officer’s car and then submitted to a brief pat down for weapons before getting into the car, he, by his conduct, voluntarily consented to the officer’s limited pat-down search, and therefore, the search was constitutional.

Accordingly, the Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ judgment.

Fourth Amendment—Voluntary Nature in General—Validity of Consent.

In this case, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether defendant’s federal and state constitutional rights were violated when he was subjected to a pat down and search of a box that he was carrying before accepting a courtesy ride with a sheriff’s deputy. The Court concluded that the pat down and search of the box were constitutionally permissible because, on the facts found by the trial court, defendant initiated the encounter with the deputy by asking for a courtesy ride and then voluntarily and expressly consented to the pat down and search of the box as preconditions of getting into the deputy’s car.

Accordingly, the Court affirmed the Court of Appeals’ judgment, although the Court’s analysis rests on narrower grounds from those on which the division below relied.