Court Opinion

ID: 9758125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:12:32.676581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:47.222152
License: Public Domain

FLAHERTY, Justice,
concurring.
I join the majority’s Opinion in No. 121, but reluctantly concur in the result only in No. 126.
Act 515, as Mr. Justice Larsen points out, is entitled: An Act enabling certain counties of the Commonwealth to covenant with land owners for preservation of land in farm, forest, water supply, or open space uses.
When we turn to § 11941 for the definitions of the key terms, “farm,” “forest,” “water supply,” and “open space,” we learn that each of these types of land use except water supply land is characterized by certain minimum acreage requirements and also by “common ownership.” Thus, it is reasonable to conclude, as Mr. Justice Larsen does, that when land is held in farm, forest or open space use under covenant entered into pursuant to this act, the land, by definition, must meet the requirements of common ownership and the applicable minimum acreage.
On the other hand, such requirements do nothing to promote the purpose of the act, which is specified as “preserving the land in the designated use.” 16 P.S. § 11943. Plainly stated, the legislature intended to encourage the preservation of farm, forest, open space and water supply . land by allowing for a reduction of taxes on this land if the *567owners were to agree to preserve the designated use for a certain period of time. Preserving land use in this manner, however, has no necessary relationship to ownership or size of these parcels. In fact, if an owner held land under covenant, maintaining the land in farm use, and sold a small parcel of the land to another, it should be irrelevant under the act whether the plot under covenant is owned by one or more persons, providing that the new owner of the small parcel were to maintain the farm use. Common ownership and a certain minimum acreage requirements may be relevant to entering into the covenants, for purposes of administrative convenience, but after the covenants have been executed, these matters are irrelevant to the purpose of the act.
Moreover, this understanding of the act, which focuses on its purpose, is supported by the act’s own definition of breach of the covenant:
§ 11946. Breach of covenant by land owner
If the land owner, his successors or assigns, while the covenant is in effect, alters the use of the land to any use other than that designated in the covenant, such alteration shall constitute a breach of the covenant____
Far from providing that the land may not be aliened, the act in this and in other sections provides that the covenant binds not only the owner, but his successors and assigns, and provides specifically that the covenant is breached by a change in use, not by a change in ownership. In terms of the purpose of the act, what conceivable difference can it make, once the covenant is entered into by the common owners of a parcel of the required acreage, if ownership changes but the use remains the same?
These observations notwithstanding, I am compelled to agree with the result reached by Mr. Justice LARSEN because of the manner in which the act defines the permitted uses. I do not think that the result in this case is what the legislature intended, but it seems to be required by what they wrote.