Berg v. Butler Savings & Trust Co.

82 A. 683, 233 Pa. 469, 1912 Pa. LEXIS 855
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJanuary 2, 1912
DocketAppeal, No. 153
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 82 A. 683 (Berg v. Butler Savings & Trust Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Berg v. Butler Savings & Trust Co., 82 A. 683, 233 Pa. 469, 1912 Pa. LEXIS 855 (Pa. 1912).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Moschziskeb,

This was a proceeding in equity to restrain the obstruction of an alleyway in which the plaintiffs averred an easement, and to recover damages for alleged injuries to their property from the construction of a building upon the adjoining land of the defendant.

The plaintiffs’ property is situated in the borough of Butler at the southwest corner of High and Jefferson streets, containing forty feet in width on High street and extending eighty feet to the westward along Jefferson street. The defendant’s lot has the shape of an inverted “L,” the long arm of which bounds the plaintiffs’ property on the south and the short arm on the west. This lot can best be described as follows: Beginning at a point on the west side of High street forty feet south of Jeffer.son street, thence extending westward along a line at right angles to High street eighty feet to a point, thence northward along a line at right angles to the last mentioned line, forty feet to the south side of Jefferson street, thence westward along the said Jefferson street twenty-five feet to a point, thence southward along a line at right angles to Jefferson street sixty feet to a point, thence eastward along a line at right angles to the last mentioned line 105 feet to High street, and thence northward along the west line of High street twenty feet to the place of beginning. The plaintiffs, claimed that a strip of the last described lot five feet in width, bounding their property on the west, constituted “a narrow alley or court,” running into Jefferson street, in which they had an easement.

[471]*471It appears from the findings of the court below that one McKee conveyed a block of land embracing, inter alia, both the properties in question to John M. Thompson; that the latter subdivided this large piece of land and made the following conveyances: (1) by deed dated November 11, 1871, to the defendant trust company, a lot on the west side of High street forty feet from Jefferson street, containing twenty feet in front and seventy-five feet in depth (being part of the defendant’s present property); (2) by deed dated January 3,1872, to one Duffy, a lot beginning at the corner of High and Jefferson streets, thence south along High street forty feet to a post, thence west eighty feet to “a narrow alley or court,” thence by said alley to Jefferson street, and thence along said Jefferson street east eighty feet to the place of beginning (being the property of the plaintiffs); (3) by deed dated April 4,1872, to one Pillow, a lot twenty feet in width immediately to the west of and adjoining the short arm of the “L” shaped lot of the defendant, described and referred to as “immediately west and adjoining John Kopp’s lot ... . the northeast corner of said lot herein conveyed being 105 feet from Main street;” that the various deeds in the line of title between Duffy and the plaintiffs make reference to “a narrow alley or court” in practically the same words contained in the deed to Duffy; that no deed of record or other conveyance from Thompson to John Kopp was produced for any portion of the piece of ground lying between the lot conveyed by deed “3” and those conveyed by deeds “1” and “2,” which piece of ground constitutes the balance of the defendant’s lot in excess of the. part conveyed by deed “1” above referred to; that the entire “Kopp” lot was claimed by defendant company under a sheriff’s deed made to one Lawall, dated January 15, 1878, it being therein described as “All the right, title, interest and claim of John Kopp of, in and to a lot of ground 20 by 60 feet, more or less, .... bounded on the north by east Jefferson street, east by National Bank building, south by Francis Baldauf and west by [472]*472Henry Pillow; a large two-story frame house thereon,” and under a deed from the heirs of Lawall in which the description is practically the same; that in 1872 a three-story brick building covering the entire lot was erected on the property of plaintiffs, the said building having nine windows in the rear or west end thereof and three openings in the basement, together with a six-inch water conductor from the roof to the ground, connecting with a sewer leading from the defendant’s building through the “narrow alley or court” to Jefferson street; that in 1872 or 1873 there was erected on the Kopp lot a frame building twenty feet in width, leaving to the east thereof a strip of land; that this strip “designated in the deeds of conveyance to the plaintiffs and their predecessors . . .• . as a narrow alley or court .... was apparent on the ground and used by the plaintiffs and their predecessors in title for the purpose of obtaining light and air in the rooms in the west end of said building, conducting water from the roof and sewerage, from the date said building was constructed in 1872 down to a short time before the filing of this bill, when the defendant company entered thereon and commenced excavating for the purpose of erecting a building on said lot;” that the defendant has placed a stone foundation wall in said “alley or court” and has threatened to obstruct it with a building; that for a great part of the time between 1871 and the date of the filing of the bill a gate was erected and maintained across the so-called “narrow alley or court” by the owners and occupiers of the Kopp property (predecessors in title to the defendant), “which gate was erected at the entrance on Jefferson street, and from time to time the gate was kept locked by the defendant or by its predecessors in title;” that as early as the time of John Kopp (1865 or 1866) the ground constituting this narrow “alley or court” was used for the storage of marble by said Kopp in connection with a marble shop which he maintained on his lot; that the plaintiffs received due and ample notice from the defendant to underpin and protect their west wall and to [473]*473disconnect their building from the sewer in said “alley or court,” — the former of which they endeavored to do and the latter of which they did; that “the plaintiffs have not shown negligence by the defendant in excavating for its building;” and that “there is no evidence in this case which would establish a claim by prescription in the plaintiffs to any land west of .... plaintiffs’ land. . . .”

The court below in its opinion states: “We do not know whether Thompson conveyed to the defendant’s predecessors in title the twenty-five feet between the Berg (plaintiffs) and the Pillow lot or not, or whether said deed antedated the deed to the predecessor in title of the plaintiffs’ land; But John Kopp was occupying the twenty-five feet of land when Thompson conveyed the land of the plaintiffs to their predecessor in title, Charles Duffy. If this land of defendant’s was conveyed by Thompson to Kopp before he ■ conveyed the plaintiffs’ land to Charles Duffy, and the conveyance called for the twenty-five feet, then the boundary of the Duffy land on the west by a narrow alley or court would not deprive Kopp of his title in this five-feet strip of land along the Duffy line. But we do not know how the land conveyed by Thompson to Kopp was described in the deed, but when in 1878 the sheriff sold it as the land of Kopp, the deed, as well as subsequent deeds, described it as being bounded on the east by the bank lot. The evidence does show, however, that John Kopp and his successors in title had used and occupied this narrow strip of land so as to obtain title thereto by adverse possession, ' except that during all the time since the erection of the present building upon the plaintiffs’ land, in about 1873, the water conductors on the building have overhung the alley eight or nine inches. . . .

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
82 A. 683, 233 Pa. 469, 1912 Pa. LEXIS 855, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/berg-v-butler-savings-trust-co-pa-1912.