Berks County Court holds that permission is not a property line

Stufflet v. Aloe 9-5 LLC, No. 23-12164 (Berks Cty. C.C.P. July 10, 2026) (Nevius, J.) (granting summary judgment against a consentable-line claim where the record showed only permissive use).

Good fences can make good neighbors. However, they do not make good boundary lines.

For anyone litigating quiet title, ejectment, or boundary disputes in Berks County, this decision draws a hard line around the doctrine of consentable lines. Decades of use are not enough. Neither is a neighbor’s blessing. What matters is whether both owners mutually recognized a visible line as the legal boundary and then occupied it for 21 years.

Judge J. Benjamin Nevius of the Berks County Court of Common Pleas granted summary judgment to the record owners, dismissed the suit with prejudice, and issued an opinion recommending affirmance.

Key takeaways:

• There are only two branches. Dispute and compromise, or recognition and acquiescence. Nothing else.
• Acquiescence in use is not acquiescence in a boundary. The claim turns on mutual recognition of a line, not on tolerance of a neighbor’s activities, and occupation follows recognition rather than substituting for it.
• Ask why the fence went up. A fence built for reasons unrelated to the deed line proves nothing about the boundary.
• Permission kills hostility. Testimony that you used the strip because the neighbor let you is fatal to adverse possession.
• Inconsistent theories may be pleaded, not proved on one record. Here, the evidence supporting the consentable-line claim is exactly what defeated the adverse-possession claim.
• Serve the trial judge. Rule 906 and Rule 1925(b)(1) service on the trial court are not optional courtesies.

Twenty-one years of mowing a neighbor’s grass buys goodwill, not title.

Background

Two adjoining parcels in Tilden Township, one residential and the other a commercial self-storage facility, share a roughly half-acre strip of land, the Disputed Tract. The claimants sued in ejectment and quiet title, asserting that decades of occupation vested title in them despite the deed descriptions. The record owners answered that the deeds, surveys, and chain of title kept the strip on their side, and that any use occurred with permission.

By the time discovery closed, the case had narrowed to one theory: consentable lines. The claimants argued that more than 21 years of acknowledged use, plus the acquiescence of the prior owners, was enough, and that Pennsylvania law does not require proof that the adjoining owners treated the fence as the legal line. The Court granted summary judgment and dismissed the complaint with prejudice.

The Court’s reasoning

The Court accepted the claimants’ version of the facts and still found no jury question. That framing matters. The Concise Statement accused the Court of resolving disputed facts. The Court answered that it never did. The dispositive question was not whether the use occurred, but whether the claimants’ own evidence established the legal elements needed to divest a record owner of title.

The doctrine has a narrow job

Consentable lines are a limited exception to the rule that deeds and recorded boundaries control. The doctrine traces to Hagey v. Detweiler, 35 Pa. 409 (Pa. 1860), where the Supreme Court held that adjoining owners may fix a boundary by parol agreement because such an agreement does not convey land; it merely locates an uncertain line. The purpose is quieting title and discouraging vexatious litigation, as the Superior Court put it in Corbin v. Cowan, 716 A.2d 614, 617 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1998). Because the doctrine strips a record owner of part of his property, appellate courts have carefully confined it.

Pennsylvania recognizes two paths. Dispute and compromise, where uncertainty about the true line is resolved by agreement. And recognition and acquiescence, where both owners treat a visible line as the common boundary and occupy it for the statutory period.

The claimants never asserted a dispute-and-compromise agreement, so everything rode on recognition and acquiescence.

Recognition and acquiescence mean recognition of a line

The Court used Moore v. Moore, 921 A.2d 1 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2007), as its framework, synthesizing Zeglin v. Gahagen, 812 A.2d 558 (Pa. 2002), and earlier cases. The test: each party claimed the land on his side of the line as his own and occupied it continuously for 21 years. See Moore, 921 A.2d at 6 (quoting Zeglin, 812 A.2d at 561). The inquiry centers on whether the neighbors mutually treated a fence, hedge, roadway, or tree line as the dividing line. Occupation follows recognition of the boundary. It does not replace it.

Moore also rejected tacking where a predecessor never asserted ownership to the disputed ground. You cannot tack possession that was never claimed.

The Court’s conclusion on the case law was blunt. Pennsylvania’s appellate courts have never held that acquiescence in the use of another’s land, standing alone, establishes a consentable line. If such a rule exists somewhere, the Court was unaware of it, and the claimants did not identify it.

The record proved the wrong thing

Two facts sank the claim. First, the fence went up for reasons unrelated to the location of the legal line, and the deposition testimony showed that neither side regarded it as the deed boundary. Second, the claimants repeatedly acknowledged that they used the strip with the prior owners’ knowledge and permission.

That evidence established decades of neighborly accommodation. It did not establish mutual recognition of a common boundary.

The Court also named the consequence of the claimants’ rule. If permission equals acquiescence to a boundary, any neighbor allowed to mow, garden, hunt, or park on adjoining ground for 21 years could take title even though everyone knew the real line lay elsewhere. Pennsylvania has never adopted that rule.

Adverse possession failed for the same reason

The Court addressed adverse possession for completeness. Adverse possession requires actual, continuous, exclusive, visible, notorious, distinct, and hostile possession under claim of right for 21 years, and every element must exist. See Conneaut Lake Park, Inc. v. Klingensmith, 66 A.2d 828, 829 (Pa. 1949); see also Baylor v. Soska, 658 A.2d 743, 744 (Pa. 1995).

Hostility is not animosity. It is possession under a claim of right, in derogation of the true owner’s title. Possession by leave or license is not possession as owner.

The claimants tried to reach Tioga Coal Co. v. Supermarkets Gen. Corp., 546 A.2d 1 (Pa. 1988), where hostility was implied. See id. at 5. The Court explained why that door was closed. Tioga rested on a record that was silent on hostility. Myers v. Beam, 713 A.2d 61, 62-63 (Pa. 1998), confirms that implied hostility does not apply when the record affirmatively disproves it. Here, the record was not silent. The claimants’ own admissions of permissive use disproved hostility, just as the claimant’s request for a quitclaim deed did in Myers.

Exclusivity and claim of right failed too. The evidence showed varied uses over time, not uninterrupted dominion to the exclusion of the record owner, and no proof that the owners were ever shut out of the strip. A claimant cannot concede another’s superior title while asserting possession hostile enough to extinguish it.

The two theories destroyed each other. The consentable-line claim depended on the neighbors having knowingly permitted the use. The adverse possession claim required possession hostile to those same neighbors. Pleading inconsistent theories is allowed. Proving them with the same testimony is not.

What this means for Berks County practitioners

Build the case around the line, not the use. Depose the prior owners and the fence builder about why the fence sits where it sits and what each side believed the boundary to be. Photographs of mowing and gardening prove use. They do not prove recognition.

Watch your client’s language in discovery. “They let us use it” is a concession that decides the case. It supports permission, forecloses hostility, and leaves nothing behind. Run that from the other side, and it is the whole defense: lock down testimony that the use was permitted, then show the fence was never treated as the deed line. That combination wins on the law without asking the Court to weigh credibility.

Pick one theory and commit. Consentable lines and adverse possession pull in opposite directions on the same facts. Running both invites the Court to use each one to defeat the other.

And serve the trial judge. The Court noted both service failures in its opinion, and neither one helped the appealing party.

A copy of the opinion can be found here.