Kosack v. Johnson
Kosack v. Johnson
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
It is apparent that the existing walls of plaintiff and the portion defendant purposes to construct will have to be considered separately.
We will examine, first, the right of defendant to use plaintiff’s walls as party walls. Plaintiff’s own description of his lot, the buildings thereon, and the walls, is set out in his petition, with great particularity. This description, except as to the dimensions of the lot, is supported by the evidence, and is as follows: “Beginning with the northwest corner of said lot (lot 11) and running thence east 85 feet, thence south 17 feet, thence west 70 feet, 6 inches, thence south 1 foot, 1^ inches, thence due west 14 feet, 6 inches, thence north 18 feet, tr-inches, together with all the improvements thereon. That at the time complainant purchased said lot in 1878, it was improved by a three-story and cellar brick building which extended across the entire front of said lot, and running back to the depth of 32.87 feet. That portion of the south of this building, beginning at the southeast corner of said lot and extending back 14 feet 6 inches, was 9 inches in thickness and built with its south face 0.34 feet south of complainant’s south line. The balance of the south line of said building was built of an irregular thickness, beginning at a point 14 feet 6 inches east of the southwest corner of said lot, and with a thickness of 1.51 feet thick, and tapering off until, at the rear end of said
The regulation as to party walls in this District authorizes a property owner to construct a party wall one half on his own land and one half on the land of his neighbor. The servient owner may then, at any time, use the wall for the purpose of attaching a building thereto, by paying the dominant owner one half of the cost of the wall. The wall thus becomes a party wall solely at the will of the dominant owner, by reason of his extending it on to the land of his neighbor. He may place one half of the wall thereon, but, if he elects only to appropriate a smaller fraction, he creates none the less a party wall. The fact that he chooses to take less is his own option, and will not prevent the servient owner from using the wall. The act of the dominant owner in placing any portion of the wall on the land of the servient owner estops him from preventing its use as a party wall. Western Nat. Bank’s Appeal, 102 Pa. 173.
This being true, plaintiff has placed himself beyond the point where he can complain of the action of defendant. If his lot, as he alleges in his petition, extends now, by right of posses
Plaintiff in his petition is claiming adverse possession against Schmidt, but Schmidt is not a party to this action, and that fact alone eliminates all question of adverse possession. Conceding that, in the deed from Schmidt to Diebitsch, an erroneous description was inserted, due apparently to its having been copied from an old deed, with other conveyances intervening, the error, when corrected, would seem to inure to the benefit of defendant, rather than to plaintiff. This error, however, cannot be corrected without the presence of Schmidt.
We now approach a more difficult feature of the case, — the right of defendant to erect a new party wall along the intervening space of 3213Aoo feet between plaintiff’s walls, and connecting therewith, in such manner as to make a continuous party wall the full length of the lots. Defendant purposes to construct his wall across the Schmidt strip and about 2?ioo of a foot on to plaintiff’s ground. The situation here is reversed. Defendant is the dominant owner, seeking to invade .plaintiff’s land, against his objection and over the intervening fee of Schmidt. Plaintiff can avail himself of any legal objection to the invasion of his property by defendant, and the objection interposed, though apparently an afterthought, but one which we cannot, in equity, overlook, is that plaintiff and defendant are not adjoining property owners. The dominant and servient estates must adjoin before the dominant owner can irresistibly invade the land of the servient owner. Here, plaintiff can properly confront defendant with the intervening fee of
The decree is reversed, with costs assessed equally between the parties, and the cause is remanded for further procedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- KOSACK v. JOHNSON
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Party Walls; Equity; Injunction. 1. The fact that a lot owner has placed less than one half of a wall upon his neighbor’s land will not preclude the latter from using the wall as a party wall. 2. A lot owner who has built a wall beyond the limits of his lot cannot maintain a bill in equity to enjoin his neighbor from using the wall as a party wall, on the theory that his lot and that of his neighbor are separated by a narrow strip of land, the record title to which is in a third person but the fee title to which is in the complainant by adverse possession, and upon which strip part of the wall rests; where such third person is not a party to the suit. 3. A bill in equity for an injunction by a lot owner to prevent the use as a party wall, by the defendant, of a wall partly on the complainant’s land, is .maintainable on the ground that the defendant is not an adjoining owner, where it appears that the defendant is not the owner of the land adjoining complainant’s lot, upon which the other part of the walls rests, but that such strip of land belongs to a third person, not a party to the suit.