Appeals court backs Hempfield Township boundary ruling

By Joe Pinchot
Herald Staff Writer

HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP July 02, 2009 12:32 am

— Superior Court has affirmed the decision of a local judge that a Hempfield Township couple did not install improvements on a neighbor’s property.
Stephan Zawistowski owns 47 acres and neighbors Gordon C. and Kimberly S. Greenlee own 139 acres in two parcels.
The property is bounded by Donation Road to the north, Methodist Road to the east, Fredonia Road to the south and a Canadian National Railway line to the west, Mercer County Common Pleas Court Judge John C. Reed said in his Oct. 19, 2007, opinion.
The Greenlees want to develop their 126-acre eastern parcel for housing and, in 2002, built a catch basin and drainage pipe on a seven-foot overlap in the parcels, a three-judge panel of Superior Court said in an opinion filed Tuesday.
Zawistowski believed the improvements were made on his land, and his surveyor determined the catch basin encroached by three feet.
On April 28, 2004, Zawistowski sued seeking removal of the basin and pipe and various costs and damages.
Reed presided over a two-day trial on Oct. 15 and 16 of 2007 and sided with the Greenlees.
Reed said the surveys were not consistent and that old, rotting fence posts and fallen wire were used to determine boundaries.
The Superior Court opinion also said there was evidence as to where missing fence posts had been located, and the Greenlees presented testimony of a man who lived on their property as a child in the 1920s and ’30s and remembered details about the original fence.
Superior Court said its role in the appeal was determining whether evidence supported Reed’s decision and he properly followed the law, not whether it agreed with his conclusion, and that Reed was the final arbiter of credibility.