212 Pa. 642 | Pa. | 1905
Opinion by
This action was to recover damages to real estate caused by the grading of a city street. The main and decisive question is raised by the assignment of error to the refusal of the court to take off a nonsuit. The facts established at the trial or of which offers of proof were made and rejected were these. In 1877 a general plan fixing the lines and grades of the streets of the city of Lancaster was approved. In 1893 the owner of a building lot applied to the city regulator for the grade line. The regulator gave her a line about two feet above the established line, and she built two houses to conform to the fine given her. In 1899 she sold the houses, and in 1900 her grantee conveyed them to the appellant. In the same year the city caused the pavement in front of the houses to be lowered to the grade established in 1877.
It is alleged in the statement of claim that the city unlawfully changed the grade of the street from the grade given to the former owner in 1893, and that because of this change the value of the property has been depreciated. There has been no change of the grade line since it was originally fixed in 1877. The whole difficulty has arisen from the mistake of the regulator in giving an incorrect line to the owner in 1893, and the real ground of complaint is not that the city has cut the street down to the established grade, but that an incorrect line was given to the plaintiff’s predecessor in title, by reason whereof she built the houses now owned by the plaintiff at a
The judgment is affirmed.