Templeton v. Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co.

Citations

• 50 Pa. Super. 341
• 1912 Pa. Super. LEXIS 55

Syllabus

<p>Railroads — Eminent domain — Acquisition to title of right of way.</p> <p>1. The right of way of a railroad company may be acquired through the exercise of the right of eminent domain, although no proceeding has been resorted to in the court of common pleas for the purpose of ascertaining the damages caused by the taking or injury to the property. If after the location of the right of way by appropriate action of the directors upon the preliminary surveys of the engineers, the company and the owner of the land agree as to the damages, and the company pays such damages, an absolute title to the right way of vests in the railroad company, and it is not necessary that the agreement and the payment of the money shall be evidenced by a deed duly recorded.</p> <p>2. Where a railroad company locates its right of way over the lands of an intestate decedent, and the administrator of the decedent authorized under the Act of April 2, 1853, P. L. 285, to sell the real estate with the assent of the widow and guardian of the minor children of the decedent, files a petition in the orphans’ court asking leave to settle with the railroad for a right of way sixty feet wide for a sum stated, and such leave is granted by the court, and it appears from the subsequent records of the court that the money was actually paid to the administrator by the company, receipted for by him with an agreement to execute a release to the company, and that the money was subsequently distributed to the parties in interest, the company has acquired an absolute title to the right of way; and a person who has acquired title through mesne conveyances to the lands of the decedent cannot, fifty years thereafter, assert a title to a portion of the right of way because there is no evidence that the administrator ever actually executed a release to the railroad company for the right of way.</p> <p>3. In such a case where it appears that the company maintained upon the right of way thus acquired one or more rai