Court Opinion

ID: 9749304
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:32:35.887099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:46.190770
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
The Majority in its Opinion introduces the stricture that “the City has appeared to be indifferent or frankly *336antagonistic to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and our decisions.'’'' I cannot subscribe to this utterance and its harsh implications. I have seen nothing in the present litigation or in previous litigation while I have been a member of this Court which would warrant the charge that the City defies the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. I do see, however, in this very case that the Majority of the Supreme Court ignores its own pronouncements and decisions. In Carrow v. Philadelphia, 371 Pa. 255, decided only two and one-half years ago, the Majority of this Court, speaking through the Chief Justice, said that the Sheriff of Philadelphia County had no authority to dismiss an employe of his office without cause. In the printed decision in the Pennsylvania State Reports, “without cause” is italicized. Yet, in the case at bar, where the circumstances italicize over 300 times the dismissal of employees with cause, the Majority of this Court declines to give sanction to the very principle it announced in July, 1952. The Majority says: “With the plan of the City-County consolidation so plainly outlined and interpreted by this Court, the Ccause> for dismissal was obviously intended to .be analogous to that ‘cause’ which enables an employe to be removed from a civil service job.”
Accepting this analogy as a valid one, is it contended by the Majority that if the charges brought by the City against the plaintiffs were proved to be true, the Civil Service authorities would nevertheless retain the plaintiffs in their positions? If an employe leaves outside the door the equipment of loyalty, efficiency, tidiness and cooperativeness, will Civil Service still regard him as a capable employe? Civil Service is intended to be armor plate for the faithful and the industrious, not a camouflaged facade for the disloyal and the indolent.
*337There is nothing in the Constitution, the Charter, the law, Civil Service regulations and in the whole world of common sense which says that the head of any responsible establishment is compelled to use in the execution of his duties the dawdling, inattentive, slovenly forces of insubordination, inefficiency, untidiness and uncooperativeness. If a formula had to be devised for the disintegration of society, the disorganization of the law, the battering down of human respect and the incubation of contempt for all authority, it would be one composed of universal insubordination, inefficiency, untidiness and uncooperativeness.
In the building of the Charter, I would suppose that the last thought entertained by the architects was that they should construct indestructible niches of security for the drones who would sleep away their days, stirring only when they heard the footsteps of the paymaster. In the Garrow case this Court specifically repudiated any such thought by saying that regardless of Charter, “it is implicit in every relationship of employer and employe that if the latter violates the conditions of his employment, and fails to render efficient service, the employment may be terminated as in the case of any other failure of a party to perform a contractual obligation.”
The defendant City specifically charges that the plaintiffs have failed to render efficient service. Why does the Majority therefore disregard its own pronouncement of June 24, 1952, and refuse to permit termination of an employment in which one of the parties fails to live up to his contract to perform efficient service? In contemplating judgment on the pleadings, all averments properly pleaded by the opposing party must be accepted as true. (London v. Kingsley, 368 Pa. 109.) The City avers inefficiency on the part of the plaintiffs. By the very criterion laid down in the *338Garrow case, judgment for the plaintiffs here is utterly unjustified.
The Majority quotes in support of its position Section A-104 of Chapter A of the Charter. A-104 was intended as a temporary shelter while the more substantial structure of permanent tenure was being built. It was to protect city employes with civil service rating and county employes who were awaiting the opportunity to pass a qualifying test, but it was never intended to provide a perpetual domicile for the idlers and the bunglers.
The whole concept behind the Charter movement was to bring a better government to Philadelphia. But the Majority Opinion would suggest that the purpose of the charter was to perpetuate the status quo. The Superintendent of a building operation who is compelled to use equipment that is faulty as well as employes who are indifferent and incompetent will never get his building completed. If, in this reorganization of the government of the largest city in our Commonwealth, the officials elected by the people may not weed out employes who, through sloth and dereliction of duty, will not allow the job to be done, the whole charter movement will have become a mockery, a delusion and a sham.
The Majority treats rather summarily the very serious matters raised by the defendant City. A vital phase of this litigation is the obvious laches practised by the plaintiffs. Laches in a case of this kind is not a technical defense, it goes to the very heart of the controversy. In a situation where jobs are involved, and especially jobs in a reorganizational enterprise, one must be prompt to assert his rights because all work must be kept moving. The plaintiffs waited for a year after dismissal before making any complaint. The Majority criticizes the City for not having supplied the *339plaintiffs with reasons for their dismissal, bat in this connection if is to be noted that the plaintiffs never asked for reasons as to why they had been discharged. It is possible that, like the child who is being whipped by his parent without explanation, they knew the cause of their dismissal without requiring specifications.
Two years have now passed since the plaintiffs were discharged. A similar period of time has elapsed since the others of the 300 employes were discharged. In the meantime the entire occupational picture has changed. Positions have been abolished, new employes have been hired, functions have been transferred from one office to another, various offices have been consolidated. While the plaintiffs and the others of the 300 were sleeping on their alleged rights the gigantic project of overhauling the City and County Governments of Philadelphia was proceeding apace. In point of efficient administration it is currently impossible to fit 300 employes into the precise jobs they once held. Three hundred eggs have been scrambled. The Majority in effect orders these eggs to be unscrambled and the contents restored to their original individual shells, but it offers no advice, guidance or instruction as to how this extraordinary feat is to be accomplished.
Since the plaintiffs were dismissed, other salaries have been paid. Are the taxpayers of Philadelphia to be required to pay two sets of salaries for one piece of work, just because the plaintiffs were indifferent to the responsibility resting upon them to have their rights adjudicated with dispatch? The Supreme Court of the United States spoke with forceful wisdom on this very subject in the case of Arant v. Lane, 249 U. S. 367, 372, when it said: “When a public official is unlawfully removed from office, whether from disregard of the law by his superior or from mistake as to the facts *340of his case, obvious considerations of public policy make it of first importance that be should promptly lake action requisite to effectively assert his rights, to the end that if his contention be justified the Government service may be disturbed as little as possible and that two salaries shall not be paid for a single service. . . Such a long delay must necessarily result in changes in the branch of service to which he was attached and in such an accumulation of unearned salary that, when unexplained, the manifest inequity which would result from reinstating him renders the application of the doctrine of laches to his case peculiarly appropriate in the interests of justice and sound public policy.” (Emphasis supplied.)
No court should render judgment without mentally envisioning what its decree will physically bring to pass. The granting of judgment for the plaintiffs here without trials as to the facts can only produce indescribable confusion and disorganization highly destructive of the laudable objectives of the whole Charter plan.
A direct issue of fact has been raised by the pleadings. The plaintiffs complain that they were dismissed without cause, the City charges that the plaintiffs Avere dismissed with cause, specifying that each of the plaintiffs was guilty of insubordination, inefficiency, untidiness in the performance of his duties and uncooperatiAreness in the reorganizational processes of the Sheriff’s office. If a head-on contradiction like this does not raise a question of fact, then the word “fact” which has heretofore been the symbol of the concrete and the objective has now entered into the vaporous world of the vague, the mysterious and the unknown.
The Majority quotes in its Opinion the Latin epigram “Quia quicunque aliquid statuerit parte inaudita altera, aequum licet statuerit, haud aequus fuerit— *341“He who decides any matter without hearing both sides, though his decision is just, is himself unjust.” With all respect to my colleagues of the Majority I find myself compelled to the observation that the Majority is doing exactly what the Latin philosopher treated with classic irony. The Majority is refusing to give a hearing to both sides. The defendants have declared under oath that the plaintiffs do not possess the qualifications required for the jobs they hold. The defendants ask for an opportunity to demonstrate to a jury that the plaintiffs do not measure up to the standards that even a Civil Service board might establish. The defendants want to know if the taxpayers of Philadelphia should be required to pay money to persons who refuse to do their work properly, who bungle their tasks, who are slovenly at their jobs and who decline to cooperate with their fellow-employes.
The Majority declines to allow the defendants the opportunity to be heard by the only tribunal set up by the law to hear this disputed question of fact — a jury. The Majority arbitrarily declares that it refuses “to sanction triáis of fact in over 300 employe removal cases.” The Majority says that it makes this decision “in the interest of justice, as well as for economy.” How does the Majority know that in those 300 cases, there is not one drone, not one hanger-on, not one clock-watcher? How does it know that there are not one hundred who were wont to show up at their offices only to receive their pay checks and then were to be seen no more until the following pay day? What ominiscience does the Majority possess that it can assume that these 300 employes are models of efficiency and deportment and render service for every dollar taken from the public treasury? The Majority says it will not permit trials for these 300. The Supreme Court has the power to refuse these trials, but in doing so, it *342cannot escape the observation that it has itself presented: “Quia quicunque aliquid statuerit, parte inaudita altera, aequum licet statuerit, haud aequum fuerit.”