Shaffer v. Lauria

Citations

• 50 Pa. Super. 135
• 1912 Pa. Super. LEXIS 20

Syllabus

<p>Adverse possession — Title to real estate — Tacking ejectment.</p> <p>1. An adverse possession begun and continued for a time may be tacked to the adverse possession of a successor, and the two possessions, if continued for the statutory period, may ripen into title; but the adverse possession of the first occupant to be available to his successor must be transferred to such successor in some lawful manner.</p> <p>2. Where an occupant of a lot claims a right of passageway over a strip of the rear end of an adjoining lot, and establishes such right of way by an equity suit, and thereafter conveys his own lot without reference to the right of way, and the grantee continues to use this strip for some years, but less than the statutory period, and then brings an action of ejectment, claiming an absolute fee in the strip, he cannot tack his predecessor’s adverse possession of the right of way to his own adverse possession, so as to establish an estate in fee simple in the strip.</p> <p>Ejectment — Evidence—Ex parte affidavit.</p> <p>3. In an action of ejectment an ex parte affidavit made in an equity suit between the immediate predecessors in title of the plaintiff and the defendant in the ejectment, is not admissible in evidence, where it appears that the affidavit was made by the mere agent of one of the parties, that the witness had never been submitted to cross-examination as to the matters stated in the affidavit; and that there was nothing to show that the affiant was dead or out of the jurisdiction of the court at the time of the trial of the ejectment.</p>