Court Opinion

ID: 9752737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:31:34.129168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:46:41.092557
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The lengthy and complex procedural history of this case should not be permitted to obfuscate the core issue presented: may the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (Board) effectively nullify an order of the Court of Common *18Pleas which is final because the appeal therefrom was withdrawn, by refusing to enforce the court’s order.
We depart from the majority’s procedural history from October 3, 1977 forward. On that date appellees filed a petition in the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County to enforce the order of the Common Pleas Court dated October 19,1973.1 On October 3,1977 the lower court issued a rule to show cause why a citation for contempt should not issue against the members of the Board for failure to enforce the court’s order. The rule was made absolute on December 27, 1977, after hearing. The licensee/intervenors appealed to the Commonwealth Court which affirmed the lower court. Licensees then filed a petition for allowance of appeal with this Court. While the petition for allowance of appeal was pending, the Board reinstated its original suspension order which had been previously vacated, but made no effort to enforce it. Also while the petition for allowance of appeal was pending, the Court of Common Pleas, on September 25, 1979, both dismissed a petition for appeal from the Board’s reinstated order and found the Board in contempt for failure to comply with the “Court’s Order dated October 19, 1973....”
In light of the fact that presently the orders of record regarding a penalty upon the licensees are the reinstated and unenforced suspension order of the Board dated August 29, 1979 and the final and unenforced order of the Court of Common Pleas of October 19, 1973, there is no issue of modification of penalty. While there is a lack of enforcement of penalty, that lack of enforcement is not a modification. Thus the majority’s exposition as to whether or not the Board had the authority to modify its original penalty, and whether or not the court had the power to alter a penalty imposed by the Board, is academic and not germane to the issue before us. Perhaps ghosts from the judicial *19disagreement regarding the power of the court to reverse or change the penalties imposed by the Board which existed in Carver House Inc. Liquor License Case, 454 Pa. 38, 310 A.2d 81 (1973) have wandered into this case. Perhaps not. However, it is clear that if such ghosts rattle about they have no place here. No modification of penalty is now involved.2
The characterization by the majority of the court’s opinion and order of October 19, 1973 as “only an affirmance of the Board’s finding that a violation had occurred and nothing more” is amazing in light of the explicit language of the order:
AND NOW, October 19,1973, for the foregoing reasons, the order of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board of August 25, 1972 suspending the licenses of Elemar, Inc. t/a Thrifty Beverage, Garrett Hill Beverage Co., Inc. t/a Thrifty Beverage, and Railsplitter, Inc. t/a Thrifty Beverage, for twenty-one days and thereafter until persons other than the licensees had been divested of all interest in the licensed premises, is sustained, and the appeals in these cases are dismissed.
[Emphasis added.]
Clearly the Board may not ignore a final order of a court of competent jurisdiction in this Commonwealth. To permit the Board to ignore a reviewing court’s order is to clothe it with a cloak of inviolability that neither other administrative agencies nor lower courts enjoy. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, by virtue of the majority’s opinion today, has been vested with a unique immunity from meaningful review heretofore unheard of in our system of jurisprudence.

. I cannot agree with the majority’s statement, “On October 3, 1977, appellees filed a petition in the Court of Common Pleas for a rule to show cause why a citation for contempt should not be issued against the Board for its [Board’s] failure to enforce its [Board’s] original order of suspension.” P.211.

. While clarity in the area of the Board’s reconsideration of its decisions and the power of the court to modify the Board’s penalties is undoubtedly desirable, a clear analysis of the instant appeal and appropriate judicial restraint dictate that any such effort to clarify ought not be made here.