Pennsylvania Trial Court Reversed After Awarding A Portion Of A Homeowner’s Property To His Neighbor Based On An Agreed-Upon Boundary That Differed From The Deed Descriptions
August 21, 2023
By: Carl L. Engel
On August 16, 2023, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in the case Castaldo v. Dohn, reversed a trial court that had awarded a portion of a homeowner’s property to his neighbor under the rarely applied “doctrine of consentable lines by acquiescence.” The trial court had found that, because the neighbors had both recognized a boundary between their properties that differed from the boundary described in the deeds, the mutually-agreed boundary had become the official boundary. Accordingly, the neighbor whose property had been encroached upon by the new boundary lost that portion of their property forever. The Superior Court reversed, however, finding that the neighbors had argued several times over the boundary and, therefore, had not consented to the boundary for a long enough for it to replace the deed description as the official boundary.
In 1995, Jack and Geraldine Castaldo purchased a 0.402 acre tract of land in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The adjacent 0.501 acre tract was owned by Robert and Dorothy McGowan. Both tracts are rectangular in shape and share a 190.39-foot boundary. The Castaldos and the McGowans had an agreement that the boundary line ran in a straight direction marked by three large spruce trees. One of the trees was located at the actual pin marking the boundary, but the line didn’t actually follow the line described in the property deeds and encroached on the McGowans’s property. The Castaldos planted ornamental shrubbery on the portion of the spruce-tree line along their driveway.
In 2000, the Castaldos built a fence on their property on the portion of the line without shrubs. The fence is approximately three feet from the spruce-tree line, leaving a buffer between the fence and the McGowans’s property. The McGowans maintained the property up to the spruce-tree line, but did not maintain the three-foot buffer.
In 2013, Robert and Dorothy McGowan, who lost the property in foreclosure, and it was purchased from the bank by Brendan and Elizabeth Dohn. The Dohns were not told about the spruce-tree line and had believed that the fence was on their property and belonged to them. In 2014, the Castaldos found the Dohns cutting the limbs of the spruce in the middle of the spruce-tree line, and told them that it was part of the boundary line. After some discussion, the Castaldos agreed to the Dohns removing the middle tree, but asked that they leave the other two in place. Eventually, however, relations soured and the Castaldos asked the Dohns several times not to perform maintenance in the buffer zone.
In 2015, the Castaldos, after seeing the Dohns mowing in the buffer area, had an attorney send the Dohns a cease-and-desist letter. In response to the letter, the Dohns hired a surveyor to survey their property. The survey revealed that the spruce-tree line did not align with the boundary line described in the deeds. In fact, the northern corner pin was located in the Castaldos’s driveway, six feet away from the spruce tree there. On July 27, 2017, the Dohns cut down the shrubbery that the Castaldos had planted.
On October 17, 2017, the Castaldos filed a lawsuit to “quiet title” by resolving the boundary-line dispute, and to collect damages for the shrubs that the Dohns had removed. In their complaint, the Castaldos claimed that they were owners of the disputed segment under the “doctrine of consentable lines by acquiescence.” Under this doctrine, a party can establish a boundary by consent if each party occupied their side of the line as their own for longer than 21 years. The Castaldos argued that, because from 1995 to 2017 (i.e., for 22 years) each household had treated the spruce-tree line as the boundary, they all had consented to it marking the actual boundary.
After a trial, the court ruled in favor of the Castaldos but did not award them damages for the shrubs. In reaching its decision, the court found that the McGowans had expressly consented to the spruce-tree line, and the Dohns had also acquiesced because they had deferred to the Castaldos for years regarding the boundary until they cut the shrubs in 2017. Therefore, the Castaldos had exercised dominion over the disputed parcel for longer than the requisite twenty-one-year period. The Dohns appealed.
The Superior Court reversed the trial court. The court found that although the trial court had been correct that the boundary line had not been contested up to 2013, the parties’ behavior after that point indicated that the Dohns did not consent to the spruce-tree line. Specifically, the Superior Court found that the Dohns’ repeated incursions onto the contested strip and the Castaldos’ repeated demands that they leave indicated that the Dohns did not recognize it as belonging to the Castaldos. Therefore, the trial court had abused its discretion when it found that the Dohns had consented to the spruce-tree line by not doing more to protect their claim.
This case illustrates how strictly courts apply doctrines such as “consentable lines by acquiescence” and “adverse possession,” which allow a party to take legal possession of another’s property simply by occupying longer than the 21-year limitations period to bring an action to quiet title. Because the application of these doctrines results in a party losing a portion of their property, courts only do so when the right to relief is clear. Here, the Castaldos’s right to the three-foot buffer was not clear, because the Dohns continually disregarded their demands not to maintain it. Therefore, not only was the trial court incorrect to award the buffer to the Castaldos, but its error was so egregious that the Superior Court characterized it as an “abuse of discretion.”