Sloan v. Baltimore R.
Sloan v. Baltimore R.
Opinion of the Court
Opinion,
The plaintiffs are the owners of two pieces of land, situate in Darby borough, Delaware county, and separated by a public road. They received a conveyance of these properties in the settlement and division of their ancestor’s estate, and at a valuation of $27,000. One lot contains eight, and the other sixteen, acres. Through the eight-acre lot the defendant company built its railroad in 1884, and this suit was brought to
The defendant company now complains of the use made of. this evidence by the learned judge in his charge to the jury, and that its claim, and the evidence produced to support it, were inadequately presented by him. This, as explained by the argument to sustain it, means that all the evidence relating to the value of the sixteen-acre tract and the property as a whole, should have been withdrawn from the consideration of the jury, or that an additional formula, based exclusively upon the evidence of the value of the eight-acre lot before and after the construction of the railroad, should have been suggested for the calculation of the damages.
In considering this complaint, however, we are met by a record which shows that both parties gave evidence of the cost and value of the entire property, and of the value of the lots separately. The formula suggested by the learned judge rested, therefore, upon the evidence of both parties; it was adapted to the claims of both, and was not framed in the interest dr to the prejudice of either. It allowed the jury to add the value of the sixteen acres to the value of the eight acres, and, from the value of the whole property thus ascertained, to deduct the value of the sixteen acres. It led to the same result as a calculation which excluded the value of the sixteen acres, but by a circuitous route. It was, however, adapted to the evidence produced by the litigants, and the. natural outcome of it. It called for a review and consideration of all the evidence in the case, for the purpose of determining the depreciation caused in the market value of the eight-acre lot by the location and construction of the railroad.
It was decided in Scott v. Sheakly, 3 W. 50, that if illegal
The judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.