Bradford v. New York & Pennsylvania Telephone & Telegraph Co.

Citations

• 206 Pa. 582
• 56 A. 41
• 1903 Pa. LEXIS 765

Syllabus

<p>Telegraph and telephone companies — Municipalities—Laches—Estoppel —Equity.</p> <p>A bill in equity filed by a municipality to compel a telegraph and telephone company to remove poles and wires from the streets is properly dismissed on the ground of the plaintiff’s laches, where it appears that the municipality had permitted the defendant and its predecessors to occupy the streets with poles and wires for more than twenty-one years; that without protest or objection the municipality had stood silently by while the defendants spent from $75,000 to $100,000; that by numerous resolutions passed by both branches of council, and many of them duly approved by the mayor, consent had been given to the erection and use of the poles, cross arms, etc., on the streets and highways of the city; that, for the privileges extended by it to the defendants, it had received a valuable consideration in the use of the poles for the carrying of the wires of its fire alarm service; that it had received and duly receipted for license and pole taxes assessed against the defendants ; that it had used the telephone instruments furnished by the defendants down to the date of the hearing; that it had by general ordinances, regularly passed, approved and published, regulated the manner in which the poles should be erected and placed ; that a consideration to the city in extending privileges to the defendants was a reservation of “ the topmost gain ” for police and fire-alarm wires ; and that the city had permitted all the poles of the defendants to be erected under the direction of either the street committee of council, the street commissioner or the city engineer.</p>