A state appeals court ruled in favor of homeowner Margaret L. Burns, who discovered that a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) project to widen County Line Road swallowed up part of her concrete porch and front steps.
Background
The legal battle stems from an August 2019 declaration of taking filed by PennDOT, which sought to acquire 0.114 acres of Burns’s 7.84-acre property in Horsham, Pennsylvania. PennDOT’s official plot plans specifically designated her house as a “masonry dwelling” and featured a cutout designed to exclude the structure from the expanded state right-of-way.
However, when Burns hired an independent surveyor in May 2024 to map out the state’s recorded plans, the survey revealed that the new state boundary line actually cut directly through her front porch and steps. Armed with this information, Burns filed a petition in January 2025 seeking just compensation for both the listed land theft and the unlisted damage to her house.
Court Ruling
PennDOT moved to throw out the home-damage claims, arguing that Burns had missed the strict 30-day window to object to the 2019 filing. A Montgomery County Common Pleas Court judge agreed with the state in April 2025, ruling that any economic damage to the house was already covered under the broader land-taking claim.
Senior Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt rejected PennDOT’s timeline defense, stating that a regular property owner should not have to hire an expensive surveyor just to double-check if state blueprints are lying to them.
The appellate court relied on a prior Pennsylvania Supreme Court precedent establishing that when a government agency files inaccurate blueprints that understate a taking, it counts as a de facto condemnation—meaning the state took property without officially declaring it.
Original reporting: Tampa Free Press — read the source article.
