Heilman v. Lebanon & Annville Street Railway Co.

Citations

• 180 Pa. 627
• 37 A. 119
• 1897 Pa. LEXIS 977

Syllabus

<p>Streetrailways — Rights of owner of land abutting on public roads where tracks are laid — Injunction—Damages.</p> <p>Street rail way companies are not endowed with the right of eminent domain, because they do not need it. They are modern local conveniences, the location and construction of which are subject to the will of the public they are intended to serve. This will is expressed through the local authorities. Such companies cannot force themselves into neighborhoods where they are not wanted. When permission is given them to occupy a public street, they acquire thereby not an exclusive right upon its surface, but a right concurrent with that of the general public. Their cars are a substitute for the private carriage and the public omnibus. They must move them along their tracks upon the surface of the street to the grade of which they are required to conform. They have no right to grade or fill or in any manner interfere with the access to private property from the highway, or so to construct the road as to interfere with public travel, or disturb adjacent land owners. Per Williams, J.</p> <p>Where a street railway company lays its tracks upon a public road, and constructs embankments which interfere with the access to property abutting on the road, the company will not, after the expiration of six years, and after the railway has become a great public convenience, be enjoined from continuing and maintaining the embankments, where just compensation can be made to the landowner for all injury done to him.</p> <p>Equity — Costs—Street railways.</p> <p>Where a decree has been entered in favor of a street railway company which a land owner has sought to enjoin from maintaining an embankment in a public road, the Supreme Court, in reaffirming the decree after reargument, will impose upon the defendant company the costs of the reargument, including the cost of printing plaintiff’s paper-book.</p>