Humphrey v. Cooper

Citations

• 183 Pa. 432
• 38 A. 994
• 1898 Pa. LEXIS 1062

Syllabus

<p>Land law — Surveys—Boundaries—Material lines — Question for jury— Review.</p> <p>In an action of trespass for an alleged wrongful cutting of timber, it appeared that the surveyor who located a block of nine tracts, in 1791, discovered before making his return that he had overstepped the boundary of an older survey, forty-eight rods; he then shortened the lines of the block on his plot that number of rods, and adopted the older survey as an adjoiner on that side. Apparently, from the returns, all the land lost by the mistake was taken from the three tracts abutting on the older survey, instead of being apportioned among the nine tracts of the block, by a change of the interior lines. But there was evidence that.one of the interior lines had been relocated by marks on the ground parallel with and fifty rods east of the line first adopted. Held, that while an actual line run on the ground and remarked as the division line of the tracts would control and fix the boundaries of the tracts with relation to each other, yet, as the evidence bearing on the question was contradictory, the court properly left it to the jury to find whether the second line had really been run as a division line of the tracts in the block.</p> <p>Where the trial judge in his charge alludes to a wholly irrelevant fact, yet at the same time gives the jury to understand that such fact has no bearing on the question at issue the Supreme Court will not reverse, unless it appears that the jury were, or might have been, misled by the irrelevant allusion.</p>