HARRISBURG — A state appeals court has ruled against a landowner who wanted to access his landlocked property by building a road through a neighbor’s land, the latest decision in a long-running dispute about how the Private Road Act should be applied.

The unanimous Commonwealth Court ruling issued said Fayette County property owner Timothy O’Reilly wasn’t entitled to the road because it would primarily benefit him and not the wider public, under a legal standard recently established by the state Supreme Court.

The Private Road Act has roots in the colonial era, and its current version dates to 1836. The high court four years ago determined such private road actions are subject to the same constitutional restrictions as takings under eminent domain.

All but one of the seven appeals judges, though, joined in a concurring opinion that said they believed the Supreme Court majority got it wrong.

Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter said there are hundreds or even thousands of landlocked parcels in the state and the state Supreme Court has rendered them “forever inaccessible and thus unusable and essentially worthless.”

“I believe this to be, in a very real sense, a taking without compensation, a constitutional harm which far outweighs the more theoretical countervailing constitutional concerns” in that court decision, she said.

Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer disagreed, saying the requirement such roads benefit the public above all was a way to balance the competing constitutional interests.