Commonwealth Court Considers Municipal Boundary Disputes

This past May, a curio story made international news when a Belgian farmer moved a stone monument on his property by approximately 7.2 feet. While this typically would have remained unknown, except to the farmer and perhaps to his neighbor, the farmer did not consider that the stone had been placed in 1819 to mark his home country’s border with France, and moving it resulted in an approximate 3,000-square-foot loss of territory for the French. Luckily, the change in location was quickly caught and resolved without international incident. The quick discovery and resulting amicable resolution between the two nations was made possible in large part because the local Belgian municipality, Erquelinnes, had geo-localized the stones in 2019 for its 200th anniversary and knew exactly where it should have been. A few days after the story went viral, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court addressed what happens when municipalities here misplace their historic markers and later disagree over the location of their common boundaries. In Woodward Township Municipal Corporation of Clinton County, Pennsylvania v. Dunnstable Township Municipal Corporation of Clinton County, Pennsylvania, Nos. 704 C.D. 2020, 733 C.D. 2020 (Pa. Cmwlth. May 12, 2021), disagreement over boundary stones and surveys dating back to 1844 resulted in a modern-day battle of the experts to determine exactly where the shared boundary of the two townships actually lies.

Although it was avoided by the farmer in Erquelinnes, wars and lawsuits are often fought over the location of boundaries, whether they are private, municipal or international. Consequently, Pennsylvania law provides certain protections for the agreed-upon location of municipal boundaries, and establishes procedures for both how to change them willingly, and how to resolve disputes surrounding their location. Article III, Section 32 of the Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits the state legislature from passing any local or special law that creates new counties, townships or boroughs or changes county limits, township lines, borough limits or school districts. In turn, it grants the electors of a municipality the right to consolidate, merge, and change boundaries by initiative and referendum, without the approval of any governing body.