Stahl v. Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway Co.

Citations

• 262 Pa. 493
• 106 A. 65
• 1919 Pa. LEXIS 710

Syllabus

<p>Railroads — Eminent domain — Land damages — •Amendment of petition.</p> <p>1. Where a petition for the appointment of viewers to assess damages for land taken by a railroad company merely describes the actual acreage taken for right-of-way purposes, the court may at the trial of the ease, on appeal from the viewers’ report, permit the owner to amend the description by adding that it was part of a larger tract of which the acreage is stated in the amendment.</p> <p>2. Such an amendment is a mere correction of the pleadings so as to enable the jury to assess the damages on the true basis of the difference in the market value of the tract as a whole before and after the appropriation.</p> <p>Railroads — Eminent domain — Deed from life tenant — Statute of limitations — Life tenant — Remainderman—Minors — Acquiescence in entry — Petition for viewers — Damages.</p> <p>3. The entry of a railroad on land for a right of way pursuant to a deed from a life tenant, although valid as to him, confers no rights as against the remaindermen; nor does the statute of limitations run against them during his life. If the remaindermen were minors without a guardian at the time of the original entry by the railroad company, no inference of their acquiescence in the entry can be drawn against them.</p> <p>4. During the continuance of a life estate, those holding the remainder are not bound to notice a possession taken and continued by virtue of a conveyance from the life tenant.</p> <p>5. When the remaindermen after the death of the life tenant file a petition for viewers, a servitude is then imposed upon the land, and the right to damages then becomes vested in the remaindermen as personal claims.</p> <p>6. A partition of the land made during the continuance of the life estate will enable each remainderman, after the death of the life tenant, to institute separate proceedings to recover his own damages, to be assessed as of the date of the proceedings to appoint viewers, and not as of