Lehigh Valley Coal Co. v. Beaver Lumber Co.

Citations

• 203 Pa. 544
• 53 A. 379
• 1902 Pa. LEXIS 758

Syllabus

<p>Land laws — Surveys—Location of block of surveys — Marks and monuments — Adjoiners—Courses and distances — Individual surveys.</p> <p>To establish the location of a block, its own marks and monuments upon the ground must be taken as indicating its boundaries ; if these be absent, then the adjoiners corresponding to its calls fix the location ; in the absence of both, then the courses and distances as returned. To establish the location of individual surveys, members of a block, the same rules are called into operation, and the separate surveys established on the ground by the marks on the ground and in their absence by the relation of the surveys to their block.</p> <p>In an action of ejectment where the plaintiff shows a complete paper title, if the defendant succeeds in establishing the location of a block of surveys older than that under which the plaintiff claims, then the presumption would be that the tracts of which the defendants claim possession are located as returned by the surveyor. This presumption may be rebutted by showing that the continuity of the block had been broken at the point where they adjoined their companions, that they had not been located at all, or at some other place; but the presumption is in favor of the defendant. The surveys cannot be wrested from or detached from their companions in the block, except by indubitable evidence that the return of the surveyor was a mistake, or wilfully false, and that they had been located elsewhere by monuments on the ground. No mere negative evidence that marks cannot now be found to correspond with the return, will overcome the presumption. As long as the location of the leading warrant is established, the location of all the tracts in the block is fixed.</p> <p>In an action of ejectment where the defendant produces competent evidence tending to show that the plaintiff’s block was and could now be well located by marks on the ground two miles east of the present location, and the plaintiff produce