Berks & Dauphin Turnpike Road v. American Telegraph & Telephone Co.
Berks & Dauphin Turnpike Road v. American Telegraph & Telephone Co.
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The plaintiff was incorporated under the Act of March 2,1805, P. L. 75, to construct and maintain a toll-road, with power to purchase, take and hold “in fee simple, and for any less estate, all such lands.______and estates, as shall be necessary”; the road to be “laid out sixty feet wide and at least twenty-one feet thereof to be an ártificial road bedded with stone,” and to be forever thereafter maintained and kept in “good and perfect order and repair.” By Section 4, of the Act of April 19,1843, P. L. 342, the charter requirement to keep the road in good repair to the width of sixty feet, was changed to fifty feet. The defendant was incorporated under the Act of April 29,1874, P. L. 73, and the several
The action was upon the contract to secure payment of the rent to the date of suit. The defendant filed an affidavit of defense in which it admitted the execution of the contract and the nonpayment of the rent, but averred that the agreement was without consideration and void, in that the plaintiff had no power or authority to make the grant intended thereby, and that the contract was entered into under a mutual mistake as to the rights of the parties, in that the defendant had a legal right to construct and maintain its lines upon the turnpike without securing the consent of the plaintiff. The court below entered judgment for want of a sufficient affidavit of defense, and the defendant has appealed.
The appellant relies upon the case of the People’s Telegraph & Telephone Co. v. Berks & Dauphin Turnpike Road, 199 Pa. 411. That case does not control the present one; there the turnpike company arbitrarily refused to permit the telephone company to enter upon its road; it cut down and removed the latter’s poles as they were put up, and expressed its determination to resist the erection of any poles along the line of the turnpike. The parties having assumed an antagonistic attitude toward each other instead of coming to an agree
The assignments of error are overruled'and the judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Berks & Dauphin Turnpike Road v. American Telegraph & Telephone Company
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- 3 cases
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- Syllabus
- Contracts — Mistake of law — Rescission—Turnpike companies— Telegraph and telephone companies — Contract for erection of telegraph line. Where a turnpike company, incorporated under the Act of March 2, 1805, P. L. 75, makes a contract with a telegraph and telephone company incorporated under the Act of April 29; 1874,-P. L. 73, by which the latter company is granted the right for the period of ninety-nine years to construct and maintain its lines over the turnpike road, and the telegraph company agrees to conform to regulations as to the erection of its poles and to-pay a rental of $10.00 per year for each mile or fraction of a mile which it might use, it cannot after several miles of potes have been erected, and the rent has been regularly paid for a period of some eleven years, cease to pay rent on the theory that it might have located its lines upon the turnpike without securing the consent of the turnpike company. Under such circumstances, where the parties have agreed in writing for the adjustment of their difficulties, with mutual rights and obligations on both sides, the contract will be enforced. People’s Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Berks & Dauphin Turnpike Road, 199 Pa. 411, distinguished.