Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co.

Background

A theater owner in Pittsburgh owned a building whose wall reached the lot line. The adjoining landowner started to build a party wall under a Pennsylvania law and intended to use the theater’s wall as part of it. City officials ordered the old wall removed as unsafe, and a contractor hired by the neighbor took it down. The theater owner sued, claiming delay, improper methods, and loss of rental income for a theatrical season, but did not allege the entry itself was unlawful.

Reasoning

The key question was whether the state statute that allows party walls makes a neighbor liable for damages that necessarily result from building on the line, and whether such a rule violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The trial jury awarded damages, but the courts held the neighbor was not liable for unavoidable damage incident to a lawful party-wall building and that the statute did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion relied on long local practice in Pennsylvania going back to early colonial statutes and noted the wall involved was thin (thirteen inches above ground, six and a half inches on the theater owner’s side), so the damage complained of was a necessary incident of such building.

Real world impact

The ruling affirms that, under the Pennsylvania statute as interpreted, neighbors may build party walls on the lot line without paying for damage that necessarily follows from that lawful building. It leaves open how far liability might extend in very different modern building situations, but for this case the state courts’ local historical practice controlled the result.