173 Pa. 82 | Pa. | 1896
Opinion by
This is a controversy between neighbors over a very narrow strip of land lying along the boundary line between them. Their farms are on adjoining warrants. The elder of these was located in 1773 by an ancestor of the defendant, and the title to the farm on which he now resides has been in the descendants of the warrantee continuously from the time of its original location to the present. The warrant on which the plaintiff’s farm is, was located about 1790 as an adjoiner of the elder warrant, and the line as run in 1773 became thereby the boundary of the younger warrant. There was evidence tending to show that for more than half a century both farms had been continuously occupied by their respective owners, and that a fence had been maintained as a division or line fence between them, up to which each had claimed and occupied without the slightest objection on the part of the other. The line of the fence which extended along most of the common boundary was intended, and assumed, to be upon the warrant line, and the improvements along it had been made to conform to it on both sides. In 1890 the plaintiff acquired his title to the farm lying within the younger warrant. The fences along the line were then standing as they had stood for many years before; but he conceived the idea that they were not, as to the part of the line involved in this litigation, standing on the exact site of the line of 1773, and this action of ejectment was brought for the avowed purpose of compelling the removal of the fence to what he regarded as the true line of the original warrant survey. The case was tried in the court below as depending on the answer to the question, Where was the line of 1773 actually run ? The assignments of error complain of this mode of trial, and of the refusal of the court below to submit to the jury the question whether the owners of these farms had not by their treatment of the line fences established for themselves the location of the line? The maintenance of a line fence between owners of adjoining lands by their acts, up to which each claims and occupies, is a concession by each of the open adverse possession by
The judgment is reversed for the reason now stated and a venire facias de novo is awarded.