Cotter v. City of Philadelphia
| Decision Date | 05 February 1900 |
| Docket Number | 110 |
| Citation | 45 A. 336,194 Pa. 496 |
| Parties | John A. Cotter and Daniel G. O'Keefe v. The City of Philadelphia, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued January 4, 1900
Appeal, No. 110, Jan. T., 1899, by defendant, from judgment of C.P. No. 3, Phila. Co., Dec. T., 1892, No. 1096, on verdict for plaintiffs. Affirmed.
Appeal from report of jury assessing damages for the opening of Ruan street, in the twenty-third ward.
In 1848, the land in question was a portion of the tract which was then laid out in lots and sold according to a plan made and recorded by the owner. In 1880, one of the plaintiffs' predecessors in title took a sheriff's deed for the land, which deed referred to the plan of 1848 and to the streets as boundaries. At the trial the defendant contended that the recital in the sheriff's deed gave rise to an implication of a new dedication of the land against which the limitation fixed by the act of May 9, 1889 had not run. The court refused to give binding instructions for defendant.
Verdict and judgment for plaintiffs for $2,900. Defendant appealed.
Error assigned was in not giving binding instructions for defendant.
The judgment is affirmed.
E Spencer Miller, assistant city solicitor, with him John L. Kinsey, city solicitor, for appellant, cited Quicksall & Lee v. Philadelphia, 177 Pa. 301, and Davis v. Clark, 106 Pa. 377.
Samuel Wakeling, for appellees.
Before GREEN, C.J., McCOLLUM, MITCHELL, DEAN, FELL, BROWN and MESTREZAT, JJ.
The plaintiffs' land through which the city opened streets in 1893 is part of a tract which was sold in 1848, in building lots, according to a plan made and recorded by the owner thereof. In the conveyances the lots were described as bounded by the streets now opened which were "laid down on a plan for the accommodation of these and other lots." In Quicksall v. Philadelphia, 177 Pa. 301, it was held that the sale and conveyance of the lots on this plan in 1848 operated as a dedication of the streets to public use, but that the owners of lots abutting on the streets could recover damages for the opening in 1893, because the limitation of twenty-one years, fixed by the Act of May 9, 1889, P.L. 173, within which the city could open streets without compensation, had expired.
At the trial of this case the city sought to evade the limitation of the act of 1889 by proof that a conveyance of the lots was made in ...
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