DRAINAGE DISTRICT ASSESSMENTS. 49 
damages the appellant is usually entitled to a trial before a jury 
which is not the case in all jurisdictions in appeals from benefit 
assessments. The statutes of many States provide that a failure to 
claim damages within the appointed time constitutes a waiver of the 
Claimant's rights. 
Benefits and damages, although fixed by the same board, should 
be determined and reported separately. This is required by the 
drainage laws of many States and should be the law everywhere. 
Benefits and damages are separate matters and can be determined 
with more certainty by considering them separately than by attempt- 
ing to estimate their combined effect upon the property. 
All property is entitled to compensation for injuries inflicted upon 
it by a drainage district. Farm lands, city lots, and railroads are 
generally held to be susceptible to damage. In the case of Aldrich 
v. Payne, 106 Iowa, 461 ; 76 N. W. 812, it was held that a town which 
owns the fee in its streets is entitled to recover compensation as an 
individual for injury thereto by the construction of a county drain 
through them. 
The measure of the amount of damage to be awarded is the differ- 
ence between the market value of the property before and immedi- 
ately after the construction of the improvement. This includes the 
value of land taken and the amount of the consequential damages, 
if any. No consideration should be given to benefits derived from 
the improvement which causes the injury. 
The most common element of damage is that due to the taking of 
land for the improvement. Where the improvement consists of a 
tile drain no damages from this cause will obtain; neither can injury 
be shown where an open ditch is constructed in a natural water- 
course. In the case of an open ditch not in a natural watercourse 
the first thing to do is to fix upon the width of the strip of land to 
be taken for the ditch. The usual practice is to consider it the width 
of the ditch, although, where considerable earth has to be put in the 
spoil banks, this question is more complicated. Where spoil banks 
are composed only of earth, it is sometimes advisable to pay rent 
for the ground they occupy for two or three years, as, by the end 
of that time, they will probably have become so leveled that the}' 
can be cultivated and no further injury caused. Where, however. 
the ditch is to be dug through timber land, it is probably more 
equitable to buy the land occupied by the banks as well as by the 
ditch, as timber and earth will be so intermingled in the spoil banks 
that it will be impossible to level them off for some time to come. 
The area to be taken having been decided on, the next point ro be 
settled is the price to be paid per acre. This is the market value of 
land in its undrained condition, which is usually a matter of common 
knowledge. 
A second element of injury sometimes present is the disadvantage 
caused by cutting off a portion of a tract of land from the rest by 
an open ditch. Such a ditch may cause two distinct kinds of 
damage; difficulty of access to the isolated lands and difficulty of 
cultivating the sometimes small and irregular fields. For the first 
kind of damages, compensation is usually made in allowing a sum 
sufficient to build and maintain a bridge or by binding the district 
