Court Opinion

ID: 9735613
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:25:42.573329+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:00.333907
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
The Act of June 11, 1941, P. L. 101, 36 PS §654 et seq., known as the Western Pennsylvania Turnpike Extension Act, authorizes and empowers the extension of the nationally famous Pennsylvania Turnpike from Irwin, Westmoreland County, to Petersburg at the Pennsylvania-Ohio boundary line. In providing for the payment of damages for property inevitably to be condemned in this operation, Section 9 of the Act declares: “Whenever a reasonable price cannot be agreed upon, . .. the commission is hereby authorized and empowered to acquire by condemnation in the manner hereinafter provided any lands, property rights, rights of way, franchises, easements and other property deemed necessary or convenient for the construction or efficient operation of the turnpike or necessary in the restoration of public or private property damaged or destroyed. In such event application shall be made by the commission, acting through the Department of Justice, or by a/ny owner or owners to the court of common pleas of the county in which the property is located, or in the case of property on the boundary line between two or more counties, then in any such counties for the appointment of viewers.” *
On June 14, 1949, the Turnpike Commission adopted a resolution condemning certain land to be used in *60the construction of the extended highway. The resolution did not specify with irrevocable conelusiveness the exact boundaries of the land condemned. After stating what was to be used for the right-of-way, it proceeded to condemn also: “. . . such additional rights and easements over such additional lands deemed necessary and convenient for purposes of drainage, and channel changes, for the relocation or change of public and private roads, and other rights-of-way, including utility and all lands, rights, easements, franchises and all other property necessary or convenient for the construction or official operation and maintenance of the Western Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike as contemplated by the said Act of Assembly, and as shown by said drawings. . .”
It was not until June 8, 1950 (practically a year later) that the Turnpike Commission notified Lakewood Memorial Gardens, Inc., the appellant here, as to the precise quantity of land that was to be taken.
Prior to June, 1949, the appellant’s property consisted of 132 acres of land with 1987 feet of road frontage on Legislative Route 910. The property was attractively landscaped with shrubbery, trees, scenic walls and a large mirror lake; it was ideally suited for the memorial park and cemetery to which use it was later dedicated. Between May 9, 1950 and June 11, 1950, many graves were sold from this tract by Lakewood Memorial Garden, Inc., (hereinafter referred to as Lakewood.)
The construction of the turnpike under the Act of 1941 resulted not only in the taking of 5.7 acres from Lakewood, but in the destruction as well of the mirror lake, wells, landscape trees and shrubbery, and the obliteration of portions of the private road leading to-the memorial park. The property was also so cut up by the Turnpike extension that various pieces of the land *61were separated from the main body of the park and thus left isolated.
At the hearing before the Board of Viewers, chosen to determine the damages involved in this taking, Lakewood attempted to show that the fair market valne of the property as of June 11, 1950, was $500,000, and that its market value after the taking and as affected by it, was $250,000. The Board refused the offer of testimony and restricted Lakewood to showing the value of the property as of June 14, 1949, when it was worth (according to a Lakewood witness) only $110,000, and after the taking worth $55,000. The final amount allowed Lakewood in damages was $22,000. The Majority of this Court has approved that award by affirming the decision of the lower Court which confirmed the decision of the Board of Viewers.
The Majority states in its Opinion that the date of taking was June 14, 1949, when the resolution of condemnation was adopted by the Turnpike Commission, and not June 11, 1950, when the Commission filed the bond which allowed it to enter upon the Lakewood site. I cannot find any authority for the Majority’s conclusions. There is not one word in the tvhole Act of 191¡.l about a condemning resolution.
It is an elementary proposition which certainly requires no citation of precedent that when any person or body proceeds by authority of a certain statute the provisions of the statute must be strictly followed. The Majority apparently admits that it cannot find justification for its decision under the Act of 1941 and accordingly says: “Reasoning from decisions in eminent domain cases arising under other statuteswe think it is both logical and just to conclude that the Commission’s formal adoption of the condemnation resolution . . . constituted an appropriation of the indicated properties.” As convenient as it may be to go to another *62realm for a standard of procedure which does not obtain in our own, we may not do this under the law. We are bound by the Act of 1941, and not by other statutes, so far as this particular case is concerned — the condemnation being under the precise Act of 19^1. If the Legislature had intended to authorize the Turnpike Commission to condemn by resolution, it would have so declared, as in fact it did in the Pennsylvania Turnpike Delaware River Extension Act (Sec. 8, Act May 23, 1951, P. L. 335, 36 PS §658.8), where it said: “(a) The commission is hereby authorized and empowered to condemn, by resolution, any lands, interests in lands, property rights, rights of way, franchises . . . and the date of such resolution shall be the effective date of condemnation. . .”
Where statutes dedicated to the same subject use such widely differing language, the only conclusion possible is that the Legislature intended to accomplish different results. (Fidelity Trust Co. v. Kirk, 344 Pa. 455.)
It is an awesome thing which the State does when with absolute authority it reaches into a citizen’s private domain and takes his property without his consent. Since the exercise of this autocratic authority is in derogation of the common law and of private rights, the Courts have uniformly held that all statutes which grant the power of eminent domain must be strictly construed. (Nichols on Eminent Domain, (3d ed.), Vol. 1, Sec. 3.213 [3], p. 235.) In A. H. Reid Creamery & Dairy S. Go. v. Phila., 274 Pa. 251, 253, we said: “Though the municipality has the right to condemn for such public purposes, its authority is to be exercised as legislatively directedLacking legislative direction, how can this Court give sanction to the method of condemnation used by the Turnpike Commission in this case? How can this Court say that such an un*63authorized procedure becomes a taking? Section 10 of the Act of 1941 provides: “Whenever the commission decides to acquire any lands, rights, rights-of-way, easements and franchises, or interests therein, by condemnation, as hereinbefore provided, and has tendered a bond or other security to secure the owner or owners for damages, and the same has been accepted, . . . the commission shall have the right to immediate possession of the property which is the subject matter of the condemnation proceedings and may enter thereon in the name of the commission” It is obvious from this provision of the Statute that any attempted condemnation by the Commission does not become binding upon it until it has filed a bond. And it is as clear as polished glass that it has no jurisdiction to enter upon the land until a bond is filed. What are the rights of the property owner in between the time of the adoption of the resolution and the time of the filing of the bond? According to the reasoning of the Majority, the property-owner both owns and does not own his land during that twilight period. If the Commission does not file a bond, the property-owner never loses title to the land. If the Commission files a bond, the ownership of the Commission covers the whole period in which the owner was unable to ascertain what his rights were. During this interregnum the owner may not use the property, improving it as circumstances may dictate, because whatever he spends in improvements will be lost in evaluation (if the Commission decides to take the property); and if the owner does nothing, there is the possibility the Commission will not take the property after all, and the property-owner has thus lost the opportunity to improve his property while he was waiting in St. Patrick’s Purgatory to learn what the Commission’s pleasure might be.
*64While the rights of a turnpike commission may differ somewhat from the rights of a railroad company, it is to be emphasized that the turnpike commission by no means acquires the sovereign power of the Commonwealth simply because the Commonwealth lends to it temporarily the weapon of eminent domain. The turnpike commission can do no more than what its creative statute allows it to do. In the case of Gilmore v. Pittsburgh, V. & C. R. R. Co., 104 Pa. 275, 281, a question similar to the one at bar arose. Did the “taking” there occur when the railroad laid out the location of a certain road or when it filed its bond to guarantee to the property-owner payment for the land taken? This Court said: “The plaintiffs were under no legal obligation to refrain from using their property by reason of any expectation that the defendant might afterwards take it. . . The defendant [railroad company] acquired no right to the possession until the security was approved by the court of Common Pleas. . . Until final location was made, the defendant was not in position to compel a sale of the privilege. Without payment or security it had no right to take possession. Prior thereto the plaintiffs’ full right to the enjoyment of their property remained unimpaired.”
Article XVI, Section 8 of the Constitution of Pennsylvania provides: “Municipal and other corporations and individuals invested with the privilege of taking private property for public use shall make just compensation for property taken, injured or destroyed by the construction or enlargement of their works, highways or improvements, which compensation shall be paid or secured before such taking, injury or destruction.”
Prohibiting the property-owner from improving his property between June 14, 1949, when the resolution was passed, and June 8, 1950, when the bond was *65filed, means depriving him of the full enjoyment and nse of his property without the just compensation envisaged in the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Majority meets this obvious injustice by stating that “the owner is entitled to damages from the date of the condemnation for detention of payment which is the equivalent of the use of the appropriated property for which he is also indemnified at its market value as of the date of the condemnation.” But it is still fact that the owner may not enjoy to the fullest extent the use of his property during the period it is darkened by the legal eclipse which may or may not pass into renewed luminance. Pull use of one’s property includes exploitation of the land in such a manner as to extract therefrom the highest measure of profit. But if one is prohibited from developing his land in a way which will increase its value, it cannot be said that he is fully compensated just because the law allows him detention money on a value far below what it would have attained but for the intervention of the taking. It is for that reason that the taking should be such an act which rings a bell of warning to the property-owner that he must cease all improvement. The private adoption of a resolution is not such a tocsin. How is a property-owner to know that his land has been selected for public use? The passage of a resolution is not such an act of dramatic import as to inspire headlines in the newspapers and special mention on radio and television programs. The Majority says that “the resolution on file as a public record in the office of the Commission was sufficient notice of the condemnation.” Is every landowner required to make periodical visits to Harrisburg to search through the books of the Turnpike Commission to ascertain whether his property has been touched by the paralyzing hand of condemnation? And even if one did by chance learn of the passage of a *66resolution which might affect his property, he still would not know by studying the resolution if and to what extent his rights were to be invaded. In approving certain drawings of the proposed turnpike the Resolution of June 19, 1949, said: “This Resolution approves in addition the said drawings 1 to 26A, inclusive, as well as the drawings made therefrom and to be made therefrom; including the right-of-way drawings, of the Commission, prepared according to surveys made in conformity therewith, and such surveys and drawings made therefrom, and other drawings and the plans and specifications for the construction of the Western Extension of the Turnpike.” How were the owners of Lakewood to know what drawings were yet to be made? And were they to be bound by phantom plans and spectral specifications?
In attempted support of its position that a resolution is sufficient to establish a taking, the Majority cites the case of Witman v. Reading, 191 Pa. 134, 143. But a study of that case will show that it was not a resolution which fixed the date of taking. It was an ordinance. A city ordinance is almost like the ringing of the bell in the tower of city hall, especially where it has to do with construction of streets, as was true in the Witman case. On the other hand, a resolution passed in an office hundreds of miles away is completely noiseless. In the Witman case this Court said: “By actual opening of and construction of the street, the date o'f taking relates back to the date of the ordinance adopting the route.”
It seems quite unfair to me that an unseen, unknown resolution should paralyze the growth, utilization and development of a piece of land and yet, if nothing is done following the resolution, the owner is deprived of compensation for what he lost during the period of paralyzation.
*67In disparaging Lakewood’s contention that it is entitled to have its property appraised as of the date of the filing of the bond, (June, 1950,) and not the date of the resolution, (June, 1949,) the Majority says that the appellants knew of the condemnation resolution in March, 1950, “when they bestirred themselves to obtain from the former owner an assignment of the damages due to the appropriation,” but even on that basis, nine months had already passed since the date of the resolution and a substantial part of the potential loss had already been sustained if the Commission had not proceeded to put into effect its plan for the turnpike extension at that point.
It is my judgment that the taking in this case could not become legally effective until the Commission delivered a sufficient bond to Lakewood to guarantee payment for the land taken. This guarantee did not occur until June 11, 1950, long after the property had been considerably improved with the expenditure of many tens of thousands of dollars. This decision therefore denies to Lakewood just compensation on that added value of property. A great deal of the improvement, as already noted, was devoted to laying out a cemetery. In this respect it might be said that the appellants have not lost everything. Part of the burial ground may now be devoted to the interment of their constitutional rights for just compensation.

 Italics throughout, mine.