Washington Borough v. Steiner

Citations

• 25 Pa. Super. 392
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 77

Syllabus

<p>Boroughs — Road law — Resolutions—Ordinance.</p> <p>A mere resolution of a borough council adopting a plan of a borough upon which the streets are represented, will not have the effect of widening or narrowing a street where the existing lines do not conform to those laid down on the plot. The accomplishment of that object requires legislative action, and, although it may be in form of a resolution the essentials to the validity of an ordinance must be observed. Such a resolution without more will not cast on one, whose dwelling has stood in the same place for years before the resolution was adopted, and probably before the borough was created, the burden of proving that when it was built it did not encroach upon the existing highway.</p> <p>Road law — Dedication—Adverse user.</p> <p>When a dedication to public use, and the opening of a street for public, travel by the owner are followed by its actual use by the public as a highway, the right in the public may become complete and absolute within a much shorter period than twenty-one years ; but when the right is dependent upon adverse user alone, it does not become complete until the expiration of that period. The use which will establish such a right must be defined, uniform, adverse, and under claim of right, and must have continued for twenty-one years.</p> <p>Where the right to a public highway is acquired by adverse user, an important element in determining the width thereof is the recognition of the limits of the way by the owners whose lands front thereon, as indicated by the monuments and fences which they themselves place upon the ground, and the lines which they fix for the same in making conveyance of their property.</p> <p>Where a house has stood from fifty to one hundred years on a lot abutting on a street in a borough, the borough authorities cannot compel the owner in rebuilding the front to recede to aline claimed by the borough to be the proper line of the street, where there is no evidence whate