Court Opinion

ID: 9746676
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:33:14.823337+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:15.758983
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
This appeal raises two fundamental questions: a) what is the legal right protected by the court below in its issuance of the preliminary injunction under review, and b) what is the *522status quo to be maintained pending final adjudication of this equity claim.
The preliminary injunction granted by the Commonwealth Court addresses an extraordinary situation. Yellow Cab Company of Philadelphia (Yellow Cab), appellee, is the largest taxicab company operating in the first class city of Philadelphia. Shanaman, et al, Commissioners of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), appellant, has been given the duty to decide whether or not a transfer of a certificate of public convenience for the operation of a taxicab in first class cities may be made.1 PUC, under that enabling section, has broad discretion in the imposition of conditions for the granting of approval. On July 10, 1980 appellee and its proposed transferee, Duke Cab Co. (Duke), formally requested appellant to approve the transfer of one certificate of public convenience (sometimes called an “operating right”). Yellow Cab has some eight hundred certificates and is presently a debtor-in-possession pursuant to Chapter XI of the Federal Bankruptcy Act.2 After appellant refused to docket the application, appellee filed a complaint in equity against appellants in the Commonwealth Court seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction directing appellant to process the transfer application and to immediately issue temporary operating authority to Duke. The Commonwealth Court issued an order requiring PUC to enter its decision on the application for approval of transfer on or before September 1, 1980. All other relief requested by Yellow Cab was denied. Appellant appealed to this *523Court and an order was entered by this writer extending the date for action by the PUC to October 1, 1980. On October 2. 1980, after oral argument before this Court, the order of the Commonwealth Court was stayed until further order of this Court with leave for the PUC to proceed on the merits of the application to transfer. To our knowledge, PUC has taken no action on the merits of the application for approval of transfer to date.
This case contains no controversy regarding the existence of irreparable harm to appellee. Appellant stated the PUC would not contest the issue of irreparable harm (R 82a) and subsequently stipulated that immediate and irreparable harm exists (R 130a). The $15,000.00 sale price of the certificate of public convenience, determined to have a value of from $14,000.00 to $16,000.00 by appraiser, George I. Bloom, former Chairman of the Public Utility Commission of Pennsylvania (R 112a), diminishes in value as the administrative process is delayed (R 117a). This reduces the monetary value of appellee’s assets3 and adversely affects its ability to reorganize under the supervision of the Bankruptcy Court.4 Conversely, an effectuated sale would further *524the prospects of Yellow Cab’s rehabilitation (Order of July 8, 1980 by Bankruptcy Judge King, paragraph 6, R 17a, 18a). *525Further, during oral argument, counsel for appellant admitted the PUC will not say when the approval process will begin. Thus, it is clearly established that irreparable harm exists.
It is also not in issue how the PUC should decide the application for approval of transfer. The result of that discretionary function is not before this Court, nor is this Court asked to direct appellant in the details of processing an application under section 1103(c)(7). What is at issue is whether the Commonwealth Court had the power to mandate appellant to begin processing an application for approval of transfer and to proceed with reasonable diligence in processing it.
The majority would reverse the Commonwealth Court and dissolve the injunction through an artful schema grounded in a distortation of the standard of review, misidentification of the right to be enforced and an erroneous definition of the status quo to be preserved. The standard of review is as follows:
‘The scope of review on an appeal from a decree either granting or denying a preliminary injunction is to examine the record only to determine if there were any apparently reasonable grounds for the action of the court below . . . ’ Lindenfelser v. Lindenfelser, 385 Pa. 342, 343-44, 123 A.2d 626, 627 (1956). (Emphasis supplied). Summit Township v. Fennell, 392 Pa. 313, 140 A.2d 789 (1958). Alabama Binder & Chemical Corp. v. Pennsylvania Industrial Chemical Corp., 410 Pa. 214, 215, 189 A.2d 180, 181 (1963).
New Castle Orthopedic Assoc. v. Burns, 481 Pa. 460, 463- 64, 392 A.2d 1383, 1385 (1978), citing John G. Bryant Co., Inc. v. Sling Testing & Repair, Inc., 471 Pa. 1, 369 A.2d 1164 (1977).
The language of Roberts v. School District of Scranton, 462 Pa. 464, 341 A.2d 475 (1975), cited by the majority, sets forth the same standard. Yet the majority applies it in such an unintended and restrictive manner as to produce a new requirement of intense scrutiny of the action of the court *526below. This constitutes a radical departure from the accepted principle of review enunciated by this Court in such cases and facilitates a most inequitable result, for now appellee is held to have no right to relief from the established and conceded irreparable harm.
The majority says the right in controversy is the right to expedite the application for transfer to first position in a lengthy qiieue of applicants for PUC action.5 Such a characterization of the right is misleading because it (1) co-mingles applications for certificates of public convenience with applications for approval of transfer of previously issued certificates of public convenience, (2) perceives the relief grantéd by the court below as expediting the application for approval over other applicants and (3) identifies the right in question as a mixture of the two. This was advanced by appellant,6 adopted by the majority opinion and is palpable error. The right in question is the right to have PUC procedure began. This right should not be .lumped with applications for issuance of certificates of public convenience under section 1103(c)(1). To deny the existence of such a right is to empower the PUC to effectively deny an application without employing the processes mandated by the Legislature.7 To protect such a right does not expedite appellee over other long-suffering applicants under section 1103(c)(1). More pointedly, the failure to docket and begin to process the application for approval of transfer without any rational explanation therefor8, given the necessity for prior approval by the PUC and the diminution of monetary value of the certificate due to delay, is tantamount to a confiscation of property. Cf. Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 270 U.S. 587, 46 S.Ct. 408, 70 L.Ed. 747 (1926); *527White v. Matthews, 559 F.2d 852 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Califano v. White, 435 U.S. 908, 98 S.Ct. 1458, 55 L.Ed.2d 500 (1978). Such lack of diligence at the initial stages of the proceedings, at least, is totally impermissible.9 There is no reason or logic in requiring an applicant for approval of transfer to wait until all pending applications for initial issuance of certificates of public convenience are determined. The application for approval of transfer filed July 10, 1980 had not been given a number or docketed as of July 22, 1980 (R 38a, 39a), a date could not be given when the application for transfer would be processed (R 63a), yet William H. Stouch, Director of the Bureau of Non-Rail Transportation of the PUC testified he could get a [docket] number for an application “today” (R 76a) and also could delay getting the number (R 77a). Under the facts of this case to hold there was no delay because of the time lapse between the presentation of the application of transfer to the PUC and the filing of the complaint in equity is sheer sophistry.
Lastly, the majority states that the status quo to be maintained by a preliminary injunction is the “last actual, peaceable [and] noncontested status which preceded the pending controversy.” For this proposition they cite Commonwealth v. Coward, 489 Pa. 327, 414 A.2d 91 (1980). What they ignored is that Coward qualified that statement by providing that it should be the lawful status not merely the de facto status.
In Commonwealth v. Cohen, 150 Pa.Super. 487, 489, [28 A.2d 723] (1942) the Court said: “The rule is ‘that the status quo which will be preserved by preliminary injunction is the last actual, peaceable (and, we may add, law*528ful) noncontested status which preceded the pending controversy’.”
fd. [356 Pa.] at 407, 52 A.2d at 321. See also Roberts v. School District of Scranton, 462 Pa. 464, 469, 341 A.2d 475, 478 (1975).
(Emphasis supplied).
It is the fact that the status the majority seeks to sustain is unlawful that justified the Commonwealth Court in issuing a mandatory preliminary injunction.10 Mandatory preliminary injunctions “although more sparingly granted, may be ordered where the rights of the plaintiff are clear or ‘the defendant must change the status of the parties while the result is pending’.” Coward, supra, at 99. (Emphasis supplied). The status quo to be mandated here is the employment of lawful, normal process by the PUC in its treatment of appellee’s application for approval of transfer. Appellant must change the treatment given appellee’s application while the result is pending if the court is not to promote and exacerbate the inequity it was called upon to redress. Lex reprobat moram. Accordingly, the PUC should have at least been required to docket this application and to expeditiously process it.

. 66 Pa.C.S.A. § 1103, as amended by Act 69 of 1980 provides: (c) Taxicabs.—
(7). The transfer of a certificate of public convenience, by any means or device, shall be subject to the prior approval of the commission which may, in its sole or peculiar discretion as it deems appropriate, attach such conditions, including the appropriate allocation of proceeds, as it may find to be necessary or proper.

. Appellee was granted permission by the Bankruptcy Court to sell one of its eight hundred operating rights by order dated July 8, 1980 of bankruptcy Judge William A. King, Jr. in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in Chapter XI, No. 78-422 (WK).

. At that appraisal, eight hundred certificates of public convenience equal $270,000.00.

. The substance of the testimony of James P. Sinnott, an employee of Yellow Cab Company of Pittsburgh (a wholly owned subsidiary of Checkers Motors Corporation), presently advising and serving as a management consultant with Yellow Cab of Philadelphia for Checkers Motor Sales Corporation (a creditor whose claim is secured by some of the certificates or operating rights) is as follows:
BY MR. POSNER:
Q What I am trying to find out from you, sir, is, what is the situation if we leave this court room today without any relief insofar as the position of Yellow Cab Company, and what is the position of Yellow Cab Company that we have relief here today?
A If Yellow Cab Company has no temporary relief from the court room today, they will be unable to continue more than two to two and a half weeks.
Q Why, sir?
A They are out of cash, they cannot get cash, they are operating at a deficit of three to four thousand dollars a day. There are people who are willing, if these transfers are put through, to come forth and advance money to see that this company prosper. The company can prosper if they are able to sell off the two to three hundred certificates.
*524Q Now, sir, what is the prevalent feeling concerning the attitude of the P. U. C., if you know, concerning the transfer of rights?
MR. MALATESTA: Objection, Your Honor.
THE COURT: I will sustain the objection. Before me, Mr. Posner, is only one certificate, concerned with one certificate here.
MR. POSNER: That is right, sir.
THE COURT: You are getting into a lot of other matters not before me. His testimony is if you don’t sell two or three hundred you are in bad shape.
MR. POSNER: I am going to lead up to that, sir.
THE COURT: But there is only one—
MR. POSNER: That is right, this one case if approved.
BY MR. POSNER:
Q What would the effect of one case being approved have upon the Yellow Cab situation, sir?
A I guess I should have stated really the one case, this test case, would be the case that would release and bring some money for continued operation and support this company and enable it to be a viable company. Without approval of this one test case, everybody is going to think that there is no chance of Philadelphia Yellow Cab ever coming out of this situation.
THE COURT: We are getting back into irreparable harm now.
MR. POSNER: Beg your pardon?
THE COURT: We are getting back into irreparable harm now.
MR. POSNER: .1 wanted to show how immediate—
THE COURT: It has been stipulated to, sir.
MR. POSNER: Then I will stop at that point, sir, if Your Honor feels that is sufficient for your purposes. Forgive me, I have been reminded that I have to ask concerning one item.
BY MR. POSNER:
Q It has been testified here today, I imagine you heard it, sir, that insurance on Yellow Cab of Philadelphia expires this Thursday I do believe.
A I heard that.
Q Can you tell the Court anything regarding that insurance and the likelihood and the possibilities concerning its renewal and under what circumstances you think it might be renewed?
A The renewal depends upon money, and the only way they are going to get additional monies is to get this test case approved, where they can go out and secure additional monies to help support and pay for the possible value of those claims.
Q Well, obviously it can’t be transferred by Thursday. Any action by this Court directing an immediate hearing have that effect?
A Favorable action by this Court would certainly open the door to change the attitude of the insurance company.
MR. POSNER: Thank you, sir. Cross examination.
MR. MALATESTA: No questions.
(Emphasis supplied). (R 130a, 131a, 132a and 133a).

. Appellee’s use of the word “expedite” does not include being placed ahead of other applicants for approval of transfer.

. Brief of appellant p. 19.

. See e.g., 66 Pa.C.S. §§ 331, 332, 333, 334 and 335.

. There are approximately 280 or 290 applications for taxicab rights in Philadelphia presently pending with appellant, as opposed to the one application for approval of transfer (R 48a, 73a, 76a)

. In the recent case of Mattos v. Thompson, 491 Pa. 385, 421 A.2d 190 (1980) we said, “Such [lengthy] delays are unconscionable and irreparably rip the fabric of public confidence in the efficiency and effectiveness of our judicial system.” One of the purposes of administrative agencies generally is to avoid delays that would be incurred in comparable judicial proceedings. Landis, The Administrative Process: The Third Decade, 47 A.B.A.J. 135, 138 (1961). The length of time constituting unconscionable delay, of course, turns on the facts of the particular case.

. “All injunctions are generally processes of mere restraint. An injunction which goes beyond restraining and commands that acts be done or undone is termed ‘mandatory’.” 18 P.L.E., Injunctions § 102.