Court Opinion

ID: 9761938
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:00:31.506186+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:27.898184
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Jones :
I concur in the majority’s opinion that the annexation provisions of The Borough Code and the Second Class Township Act (Act of 1953) should be read “in pari materia” so that a husband and wife owning land as tenants by the entireties are to be counted as one freeholder. It is still my opinion, however, that all determinations under the two statutes referring to annexation of part or all of a second-class township to a borough, whether substantive or procedural, are “in pari materia” and should be construed as one law. See, Jenner Twp. Annexation Case, 423 Pa. 609, 225 A. 2d 247 (1967) (dissenting opinion). With due respect to the majority’s position that Art. Y, Sec. 9 of the new Constitution assures broad appellate review from the determination of an annexation case by a common pleas court and that, therefore, the concern of the dissenters in Jenner Twp. no longer exists, I must disagree. My *320dissent in Jenner Twp. was not based solely on tbe distinction between tbe two statutes respecting tbe scope of appellate review but also concerned additional distinctions found in the two statutes which could only be alleviated by construing the pertinent sections of the two acts as one law.
As the majority points out, the two statutes relate to the identical transaction—annexation by a borough of land in a second-class township. A reading of the two statutes exhibits no conflict in their respective provisions. Following the legislative mandate that “laws in pari materia shall be construed together, if possible, as one law,”1 it is evident that both statutes can be followed and the procedures dovetailed without difficulty. The Act of 1953 simply provides additional steps which must be complied with if land is to be taken from a second-class township. Two of the most important requisites of the Act of 1953, not required by The Borough Code, are: (1) notice of the proposed annexation must be provided to the supervisors of the second-class township,2 and (2) the burden of financing an appeal is upon the party seeking the annexation.3 Continuation of the failure to read the two acts as one law “emasculates and effects, for all practical purposes, a repeal of the 1953 statute,” Jenner Twp. Annexation Case, 423 Pa. at 609, 225 A. 2d at 252, since those who seek to have their lands annexed most assuredly will do so under the Borough Code rather than the 1953 Act. See, Slatington Borough Ordinance, 32 Pa. D. & C. 2d 539 (Q.S. Lehigh 1963). Repeating what I stated in Jenner Twp., “It may well be that there should be one statute dealing with the procedure of annexation. However, since the legislature has *321seen fit to enact two statutes dealing with the same subject and since it is possible to construe them as one law, I would follow the legislative mandate and construe these statutes, which are in pari materia, as one law.”

 Act of May 28, 1937, P. L. 1019, art. IV, §62, 46 P.S. §562.

 Act of July 20, 1953, P. L. 550, §1, 53 P.S. §67501.

 Id.