Court Opinion

ID: 9766405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:46:11.199812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:22.223215
License: Public Domain

CRAIG, President Judge,
concurring.
Procedural confusion will be the result of labeling this type of case as an appeal by a landowner to the trial court when in fact the township filed this execution suit in court against the landowner, who, by law, answered and defended it.
The opinion in support of judgment of the court rightly exercises our jurisdiction, and, in accordance with a sound analysis of the merits, properly affirms the trial court’s confirmation of the major portion of the municipal claims upon which the township has sued.
But where (1) the township initiated this action as a civil execution suit, (2) the landowner answered it as a civil execution suit, and (3) the parties tried it de novo as a civil *97execution suit, without any agency hearing or any “adjudication ... of a local agency” which could be a subject for appeal, this court should not relabel this proceeding as an appeal for the purpose of ruling out the post-trial motions under the aegis of Pa.R.C.P. No. 227.1(g), prohibiting post-trial motions only in “an appeal from the final adjudication or determination of a local agency” — not in a case like this.
This action is not an appeal, but rather a civil action in which post-trial motions can be filed under Pa.R.C.P. No. 227.1. This scire facias under the Municipal Claims Act of May 16, 1923, P.L. 207, §§ 3(a), 14, 53 P.S. §§ 7106(a), 7182, as amended, is included as a “civil action or proceeding at law” expressly subject to the Pa. Rules of Civil Procedure for the purpose of depositions and discovery, Pa.R.C.P. No. 4001(a)(1), as the opinion supporting the judgment forthrightly acknowledges.
Even though this civil execution suit — which culminated in the trial court’s order of June 20, 1991 confirming the assessments — is based upon statutory law, that does not mean that it is a statutory appeal. Virtually all of Pennsylvania’s procedural remedies today are based upon statutes such as the Judicial Code1 and upon procedural rules rather than upon common law foundations.
Because the trial court here did not review or rehear any local tribunal’s findings adopted pursuant to a local agency hearing, but conducted its own non-jury trial, the post-trial motions pursued by the parties and the court would seem eminently reasonable and proper.
However, if there may be some policy reason against giving a trial court the opportunity to double-check the basis for its non-jury judgment in a matter such as this, or if Pa.R.C.P. No. 227.1(g) suffers from ambiguity, then this court should leave to the Supreme Court its prerogative of (1) expressly prohibiting post-trial proceedings in civil execution suits, or (2) going beyond the rule’s prohibition of such review in statutory *98appeals, to add a new prohibition in cases such as this, where the municipality is the suitor and not the appellee.
Our procedural hurdles and mazes provide enough traps for the wary, as well as the unwary, without this court adding to the complications which confront the bar and the public, by our sua sponte conclusion that the township, by filing its action, was initiating an “appeal” from its own assessment.
FRIEDMAN, J., joins with this concurring opinion.

. 42 Pa.C.S. §§ 101-9781.