Gibbs v. Sweet

Citations

• 20 Pa. Super. 275
• 1902 Pa. Super. LEXIS 224

Syllabus

<p>Waters — Fishing—Deed—Trespass—Exclusive right.</p> <p>While at common law an action of ejectment will not lie for the possession of a pool or other piece of water by the name of water only, yet by a grant of a well defined pool or pond there passes to the grantee a right of fishing. When he who makes such a grant is the sole and absolute owner of the pond, and the grant is made without reservation, the right of the grantee to the fishery is exclusive. The proper remedy, under our present system of procedure for any interruption of or intrusion upon such a right, is an action of trespass.</p> <p>Deed — Waters—Pond—Tille—Description.</p> <p>A grant by deed of a tract of land extending across the mouth of the outlet of a pond, and also “all of the said pond and lands adjoining thereto not conveyed in other deeds,” includes all of the land in the entire tract, whether under or out of the water which had not by conveyances become detached from the tract of which tiie margin was a part.</p> <p>Where the owners of a pond have conveyed the pond and the lands thereunder, the riparian rights become severed from the adjacent land, and it is not within the power of such owners subsequently to revive said rights in favor of other land not conveyed by executing a deed calling for the pond as a boundary.</p> <p>Waters — Lake—Adverse possession.</p> <p>Where the title to a lake and the land under it are distinct from that of the shore owner, adverse possession of the one can never give title to or right in the other.</p> <p>Easement — Fishing—Prescriptive right.</p> <p>In an action of trespass for wrongfully fishing in a pond, where it appears that the defendant owns no land near to the pond and makes no attempt to prescribe in a que estate, he cannot eatablish a prescriptive right to fishing in the pond by evidence that he had commenced to fish in the pond in 1802, and from that time down until 1895 he liad fished there quite often in the summer time, sometimes three or four t