Case ID: pa_231/html/0140-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Allentown, Appellant, v. Roth.
    
      Municipalities — Municipal claims — Personal action against owner— Assessments — Act of April 4,1907, P. L. 40-
    
    The Act of April 4, 1907, P. L. 40, providing “that hereafter all municipalities of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania may proceed for the recovery or collection of any municipal claim or claims whatsoever by lien or by an action of assumpsit,” is not retroactive and does not apply to cases in which the improvements were completed and the assessments made thereon prior to the enactment of that statute.
    Argued Jan. 31, 1911.
    March 20, 1911:
    Appeal, No. 4, Jan. T., 1911, by plaintiff, from judgment of C. P. Lehigh Co., Jan. T., 1910, No. 59, sustaining defendants’ demurrer to statement in case of city of Allentown to use of Warren Brothers Company v. Henry Roth et al.
    Before Brown, Mestrezat, Elkin, Stewart and Moschzisker, JJ.
    Affirmed.
    Assumpsit to recover an assessment for street paving. Before Trexler, P. J.
    The opinion of the Supreme Court states the case.
    The court sustained defendants’ demurrer to the statement of claim and entered judgment for defendants.
    
      Error assigned was the order sustaining demurrer.
    
      Frank Jacobs, for appellant.
    
      Thos. H. Diefenderfer, for appellees.
   Per Curiam,

This is an action in assumpsit by the appellant to recover from a number of property owners in the city of Allentown the amount of assessments against their properties for certain municipal improvements. It seeks to recover under the Act of April 4, 1907, P. L. 40. That act is not retroactive, as is clearly pointed out in Barnesboro Borough v. Speice, 40 Superior Ct. 609. The improvements for which the appellant sues were completed and the assessments made thereon prior to the passage of the act of 1907, and its provisions cannot, therefore, be invoked. The judgment for the defendants on their demurrer is affirmed.