Murphy v. Green

Citations

• 48 Pa. Super. 1
• 1911 Pa. Super. LEXIS 330

Syllabus

<p>Ground, rents — Nonpayment for fifty years — Payments and promises to pay — Redeemable and irredeemable ground rents — Acts of April 27,1855, P. L. 868, and June 24,1885, P. L. 161.</p> <p>1. Where no payments were made of a ground rent from the time of its creation in 1849, until 1900, and then the owners of the ground paid the rent from 1900 to 1906, and the ground landlord received the same, and the owners represented that the ground rent was valid and subsisting and that they would thereafter pay the same, and it was purchased by the plaintiff as such, the fact that no payment was made from 1849 to 1900 does not extinguish the original ground rent, and the ground owners who agreed to pay and did pay the rent from 1900 to 1906 and their successors in title cannot enforce a claim to redeem the rent as a redeemable ground rent under the Act of June 24,1885, P. L. 161. Nor can they be heard to say that the ground rent has become extinguished and irrecoverable.</p> <p>2. In such a case even if the irredeemable ground rent had been extinguished by the nonpayment of it for fifty years still the ground owners who made the promises to pay and made the payments and their successors in title are estopped from denying that the ground rent which had been purchased on the strength of the recorded deed creating it and the promises to pay and the payments from 1900 to 1906, was a valid and subsisting irredeemable ground rent.</p> <p>3. Where suit is brought in such a case to enforce the payment of ground rent accruing after such payments made the twenty-one years referred to in the Act of April 27, 1855, P. L. 368, are the twenty-one years next preceding the bringing of the suit.</p>