Legal Opinion

Fisher v. Coyle

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided November 15, 1834PublishedCited by 4 opinions

ERROR to the common pleas of Dauphin county. This was an action of ejectment for about the one sixteenth of an acre of land, in which George Fisher was plaintiff, and the President, Managers and Company of the Lancaster, Elizabethtown and Middletown Turnpike Road, substituted in the room of Wm. Coyle, were defendants.

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ERROR to the common pleas of Dauphin county. This was an action of ejectment for about the one sixteenth of an acre of land, in which George Fisher was plaintiff, and the President, Managers and Company of the Lancaster, Elizabethtown and Middletown Turnpike Road, substituted in the room of Wm. Coyle, were defendants. The land in question was occupied by a house which had been built for a toll-house by the defendants, on the ground occupied by the location of the road, but had not been occupied for that purpose, or any other business of the company, for some years before suit brought. Many…

1Per curiam

The act of incorporation gives the company no estate in the soil. It gives a right of way merely, and not even a right to build houses on the road for the accommodation of gatekeepers and toll gatherers. Ground for that is to be procured in the ordinary way from the adjoining owners: but even if the franchise extended to the building of houses within the corporate limits, the company would forfeit them by turning them, as was done here, to uses foreign to the original purpose. The plaintiff below, therefore, was in any event entitled to recover on his original ownership against an occupant by…

2Cited by4 opinions

  1. Shelbyville & Brandywine Turnpike Co. v. GreenIndiana Supreme Court · 1884
  2. Ridge Turnpike Co. v. StoeverSupreme Court of Pennsylvania · 1843
  3. Ridge Turnpike v. StoeverSupreme Court of Pennsylvania · 1841
  4. Miller v. Borough of New OxfordSuperior Court of Pennsylvania · 1933

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