Smeltzer v. Ford City Borough

Citations

• 246 Pa. 560
• 92 A. 702
• 1914 Pa. LEXIS 556

Syllabus

<p>Beal property — Servitudes—Water—Floods—Urban property— Protection by dilce — Equity—Bill to restrain construction of dilce.</p> <p>1. The owners of low ground along or near a river, may guard themselves against flood water, even though the effect may be to temporarily increase the depth of the water upon other ground, leaving it to other owners to protect themselves in like manner against what, like the sea, must be regarded as a common enemy, the.onset of which may. be resisted without liability to any other owner of land for damages resulting thereupon;</p> <p>2. Lowlands, lying along a navigable gtream, having become urban property, owe no servitude to other upper adjoining lands to carry off, without interference, extraordinary flood waters, resulting from rainfall or the melting of snows, which occasionally and at infrequent intervals only, leave the main channel of the river, and flow over the low or bottom lands.</p> <p>3. Where in a suit in equity to restrain the construction by defendants of a dike to protect their property from occasional floods, it appeared that defendants owned urban property in the vicinity of a navigable stream, that plaintiff owned adjacent property above defendant’s property, that in time of floods defendant’s property was inundated and that such dike if constructed would cause the water to back up on plaintiff’s land, the defendant’s property owed no servitude to plaintiff’s property to carry qff the extraordinary flood waters, and the court properly dismissed the bill.</p>