Jones v. Greenfield

Citations

• 25 Pa. Super. 315
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 61

Syllabus

<p>Lateral support — Buildings and structures' — Damages.</p> <p>The right of lateral support as between individual owners is the right to have land in its natural state supported by the adjacent land. It is an incident to the land, a right of property necessarily and naturally attached to the soil.</p> <p>When an owner makes an excavation upon his land, in a manner free from negligence, and so deprives a neighbor's property of lateral support, his liability for damages is limited to the injury to the land without regard to the buildings or structures thereon.</p> <p>Practice, C. P. — Trial—Points—Charge.</p> <p>A trial judge is not bound to answer in detail every point that counsel may put to him, nor even to affirm a correct legal proposition in the exact phrase presented. If the law applicable to the case is plainly, fully and accurately stated, there is no cause of complaint if the judge chooses to express it in his own words. To dispose formally of points submitted without reading them to the jury, the charge of the court should not omit anything favorable to either side, nor should it contain any erroneous statement of law or fact that is raised by a point submitted for special instruction.</p>