Court Opinion

ID: 9753693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:22:45.051428+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:40.411426
License: Public Domain

Justice NEWMAN
dissenting.
1 respectfully dissent, as I do not believe that Hydropress Environmental Services, Inc., (Hydropress) had standing to pursue the present declaratory judgment action.
“A party seeking judicial resolution of a controversy in this Commonwealth must, as a prerequisite, establish that he has standing to maintain the action.” Bergdoll v. Kane, 557 Pa. 72, 731 A.2d 1261, 1268 (1999) (quoting Nye v. Erie Insurance Exchange, 504 Pa. 3, 470 A.2d 98, 100 (1983) (emphasis supplied)). “The question of standing is rooted in the notion that for a party to maintain a challenge to an official order or action, he must be aggrieved in that his rights have been invaded or infringed.” Franklin Twp. v. Com., Dept. of Environmental Resources, 500 Pa. 1, 452 A.2d 718, 719 (1982). We have repeatedly observed and held that to possess standing, “a party must (a) have a substantial interest in the subject-matter of the litigation; (b) the interest must be direct; and (c) the interest must be immediate and not a remote consequence.” Id.) see also Bergdoll, 731 A.2d at 1268; William Penn Parking Garage v. City of Pittsburgh, 464 Pa. 168, 346 A.2d 269 (1975) (plurality opinion).
“[T]he requirement of a ‘substantial’ interest simply means that the individual’s interest must have substance — there must be some discernible adverse effect to some interest other than the abstract interest of all citizens in having others comply with the law.” William Penn, 346 A.2d at 282; see also South Whitehall Twp. Police Service v. South Whitehall Twp., 521 *496Pa. 82, 555 A.2d 793 (1989). The second, “direct” prerequisite “simply means that the person claiming to be aggrieved must show causation of the harm to his interest by the matter of which he complains.” William Penn, 346 A.2d at 282. Finally, the “immediate” element of the analysis “concernís] ... the nature of the causal connection between the action complained of and the injury to the person challenging it.” Id. at 283.
Presently, Hydropress alleges that its right to apply biosolids within Upper Mt. Bethel Township (Township) is being restricted by Township Ordinance 2001-01 (Ordinance). However, as acknowledged by the litigants, even without the Ordinance, Hydropress could not have applied biosolids within the Township, without first seeking and obtaining permission to do so from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Thus, the interest asserted by Hydropress was not affected by the Ordinance. Instead, it was the agreement reached between DEP and Hydropress that restricted the ability of Hydropress to conduct business within the Township. Accordingly, Hydropress cannot satisfy the “direct” or the “immediate” elements of the standing analysis.
In its brief to this Court, Hydropress all but concedes that it has not submitted any applications with DEP seeking permits to apply biosolids within the Township.1 Clearly, if Hydropress could not operate within the Commonwealth without first obtaining a permit from DEP and Hydropress did not even submit an application to receive approval by DEP at the time it challenged the Ordinance, Hydropress did not have the permission of DEP to operate within the Township at that time.2 Thus, the Ordinance did not directly cause any harm to Hydropress.
*497Moreover, in my opinion, the concept of immediacy as used for purposes of standing, necessarily retains its common meaning and, therefore, requires the unfettered right to act. See Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed.), p. 749 (defining “immediate” as “[pjresent; at once; without delay; not deferred by any interval of time----The word denotes ... that action is or must be taken either instantly or without any considerable loss of time”); Webster’s Third International Dictionary (Unabridged) (1986), p. 1129 (giving the primary definition for “immediacy” as “freedom from or absence of an intervening medium” and defining “immediate” as, inter alia, “acting or being without the intervention of another object, cause or agency; ... having no individual intervening; ... [and] occurring, acting, or accomplished without loss of time; made or done at once”). Accordingly, I agree with the dissenting opinion of Judge F’riedman, wherein she stated the following:
When the trial court issued its opinion, Hydropress was “currently preparing application packages to be submitted for [DEP’s] review and approval of locations [within the Township].” In other words, Hydropress had not even completed an application to obtain DEP approval to operate within the Township. Thus, the “immediate” cause of the inability of Hydropress to conduct business within the Township is the failure of Hydropress, itself, to complete an application to submit to DEP. If Hydropress fails to complete the application, or submit it to DEP, [the] Ordinance ... will never become the “immediate” cause of the inability of Hydropress to conduct business within the Township. At some point in the future, after Hydropress has completed an application and submitted it to DEP and after DEP has reviewed and approved the application, [the] Ordinance ... may become the “immediate” cause of the inability of Hydropress to operate within the Township. At the present time, however, it seems to me that the causal connection between the inability of Hydropress to operate within the Township and [the] Ordinance ... is too remote.
Hydropress Environmental Serv., Inc. v. Turp. of Upper Mt. Bethel, No. 1436 CD 2001, pp. 3-4 (Pa.Cmwlth. March 7, 2002) *498(memorandum) (Friedman, J., dissenting) (internal citation omitted) (emphasis in original).
Further, as cited by- the Majority, the trial court found that “the interim agreement between Hydropress and DEP ... gave Hydropress the right to seek permission to operate within the Township.” Majority Opinion, p. 487, 836 A.2d p. 917. Thus, the trial court did not find that the agreement gave Hydropress the right to operate, which is, in my opinion, what is necessary to have a “direct” and an “immediate” interest to have standing in the present case. Simply, I do not view having the right to seek permission to do something on the same footing as being actually permitted to do it. Accordingly, unlike the Majority, I do not perceive the trial court’s holding as an impediment to my conclusion that Hydro-press did not have standing to challenge the Ordinance.3 On the contrary, the finding that the agreement with DEP gave Hydropress the mere right to seek permission to operate within the Township, as opposed to the unfettered right to operate, only serves to reinforce my conclusion that the interest of Hydropress was not “direct” or “immediate,” because it did not have the right to operate within the Township at the time it challenged the Ordinance. This analysis does not vary because the Ordinance “does not require that a party receive a permit from DEP before receiving a permit from the Township,” see Majority Opinion, p. 487-88, 836 A.2d p. 917, since this observation does not obviate the fact that, irrespective of the requirements set forth in the Ordinance, Hydro-press cannot apply biosolids within the Township without first obtaining a DEP permit.
Finally, unlike the Majority, I view Empire Sanitary Landfill, Inc. v. Com., Dept. of Environmental Resources, 546 Pa. *499315, 684 A.2d 1047 (1996), as wholly inapposite to the present situation. In Empire, a county waste management plan designated three landfills for waste disposal and required all municipal waste to be disposed of at one of these designated disposal facilities. 684 A.2d at 1051. An operator of a non-designated waste disposal site and a trash hauler, who contracted to dispose its waste at that site, challenged the county’s waste disposal plan. Id. at 1051-53. In rejecting an argument that the challengers had no standing, this Court commented that the parties, in fact, had standing, “for if the [waste management plan] is declared unconstitutional, then it is ‘business as usual’ for them” or, in other words, that the trash hauler could return to delivering municipal waste to the non-designated waste disposal site. Id. at 1057 n. 15.
This is not what is taking place in the instant matters. Even if the Ordinance was found to be invalid, Hydropress still does not have the right to apply biosolids within the Township, without a permit from the DEP. Thus, even without the Ordinance, Hydropress cannot conduct “business as usual.”
Accordingly, I would find that Hydropress did not have standing to challenge the Ordinance and would reverse the Commonwealth Court on this ground without addressing the substantive issues raised by the parties.

. See Brief for Hydropress, p. 41 (stating that "Hydropress now prepares an application package with respect to each of its potential land application sites for review by [DEP].” (Emphasis supplied)).

. Unlike the Majority, I do not view the current status of the applications that Hydropress submitted to the DEP as relevant in addressing the issue of standing. It is important, however, that at the time Hydropress challenged the Ordinance, as admitted in their own brief, see note 1, supra, Hydropress had not submitted the application to obtain a DEP permit.

. I note that the holding of the trial court, which stated that the Ordinance deprived Hydropress of its right to seek permission to operate within the Township constituted "direct, immediate, and substantial harm,” is a legal conclusion that is not entitled to any deference by this Court, as our review of legal questions is plenary. See Phillips v. A-Best Products Co., 542 Pa. 124, 665 A.2d 1167, 1170 (1995); Young v. Young, 507 Pa. 40, 488 A.2d 264, 265 (1985) (stating that where a case “involves only questions of law, we are not bound by the conclusions of the courts below ....”).