21 Pa. Super. 43 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1902
Opinion by
This proceeding was irregular from its inception. It commenced by a petition of the plaintiff to the judge of the court of common pleas of Greene county, to restrain the defendant company from erecting a telephone pole on the land of the petitioner. The learned judge made an order directing that an injunction issue. The defendant company filed an answer and moved the court to dissolve the injunction and dismiss the plaintiff’s bill upon the grounds that the same offended against the rules of equity practice adopted by the Supreme
Independently of the total departure from the forms and practice of equity, the bill was fatally defective in substance. The only allegation of fact was, that the defendant corporation was about to erect a telephone pole on the property of the petitioner, and tha.t the erection of said pole would be a great and irreparable damage to said property. If the defendant corporation was without authority to erect the pole, or such erection would be unlawful, the bill should have so averred: Delaware County’s Appeal, 119 Pa. 159; Kemble v. Phila.,
The evidence which plaintiff offered in support of his bill established that the point at which it was proposed to erect the pole was not upon private property, but at the curb line of two public streets in the borough of Waynesburg. The learned judge found as a fact that the defendant was a legally organized corporation of Pennsylvania and that the proper authorities of the borough of Waynesburg had by ordinance granted it the necessary franchise and right to construct lines of telegraph and telephone wires within the limits of said borough with the right to erect poles in and upon the several streets and alleys of said borough. A street in a city is subject to a greater servitude in favor of the public than a road in the open country. The borough had the right to authorize the use both of the cartway and sidewalk of the street for any urban purposes, and for such use the owners of abutting properties are not entitled to damages, unless there be some direct or consequential injury to the abutting land: McDevitt v. People’s Natural Gas Company, 160 Pa. 367. The rights of a property owner with regard to a telephone pole erected in a public street of a borough are not the same as when the location is upon his private land. This plaintiff ought to have made the averments of his bill in harmony with the facts.
The decree of the court below is reversed; and it is now ordered that plaintiff’s bill be dismissed and that he pay the costs in the court below and upon this appeal.