Court Opinion

ID: 9754563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:04:08.105751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:54.659998
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Jones :
Acting through the Secretary of Health, the Commonwealth instituted this equity action alleging that the Glen Alden Corporation and the Pennsupreme Coal Company (Coal Companies), were maintaining, in Ashley Borough and Hanover Township, Luzerne County, a “coal refuse disposal site on which there [are] burning coal refuse piles” and that the “burning coal refuse *65piles release noxious gases which constitute a nuisance in that they adversely affect the health and well-being of the residents of the surrounding area”, a “nuisance detrimental to public health.” The Commonwealth further alleges that the Coal Companies have failed and refused to take any action to abate the release of the noxious gases from the burning coal refuse disposal sites, even though ordered to do so by the Secretary of Health over three and one quarter years ago.
The court below and the majority of this Court now hold, even though the alleged facts must be accepted as true in this posture of the litigation, that equity has no jurisdiction to act because the Air Pollution Control Act1 furnishes an adequate remedy. With this view I thoroughly disagree and register my dissent.
It is clear beyond question that what the Commonwealth avers is that the Coal Companies are tortiously using the land and maintaining thereon a nuisance inimical and dangerous to the public health. Time and again this Court has recognized that equity has jurisdiction to enjoin the tortious use of land2 and to abate a nuisance.3 While the majority opinion, at least impliedly, recognizes such jurisdiction in equity, nevertheless it determines that equity does not have jurisdiction in the case at bar because of the existence of an adequate statutory remedy in the provisions of the Air Pollution Control Act.
In my view, the position taken by the majority of this Court is untenable. I am of the opinion that: (a) *66the statutory remedy is inadequate; (b) even under the provisions of the Air Pollution Control Act, jurisdiction in equity is preserved for the Secretary of Health; (c) equitable relief is necessary in the case at bar to prevent irreparable damage; (d) equity provides the only forum to protect the public health under the instant factual situation.
The majority opinion places reliance principally on Collegeville Borough v. Philadelphia Suburban Water Company, 377 Pa. 636, 105 A. 2d 722, and attempts to distinguish Commonwealth ex rel. Shumaker v. New York & Pennsylvania Co., Inc., 367 Pa. 40, 79 A. 2d 439, on the grounds that in Collegeville this Court “properly refused to follow [the] implications” of Shumaker and limited Shumaker to situations where there is an express preservation of equitable jurisdiction. I do not so read Collegeville. In Collegeville, we stated, 377 Pa. at 657: “Moreover, there is a very great difference between the intervention of a court of equity under the circumstances presented in the Shumaker case to prevent harm to the public caused by the pollution of a stream of water, and an intervention which would obstruct or prevent the conservation, control and equitable distribution of the waters of the Commonwealth for the benefit of the public — a function properly vested in a legislative agency with State-wide jurisdiction. In the former instance, the court is acting in consonance with the statutorily declared policy and purpose of the Legislature; in the latter instance, contrary to it.” In the case at bar, the Commonwealth is attempting to abate a situation which is causing irreparable harm to the public.
In Shumaker, this Court said that, even without a provision in a statute expressly preserving equitable jurisdiction, “because of the grave menace to the public interest arising from corruption of waters affecting as it does the health, welfare and comfort of the public, . . ., we have always refused to accept statutes out*67lawing pollution as restricting the common law right to abate stream pollution.” (367 Pa. at 51). The same rationale is apposite in the instant situation; the grave menace to the public health and welfare arising from the emission of the noxious fumes and gases from these burning coal refuse disposal sites should impel us to entertain jurisdiction in equity despite the Air Pollution Control Act. See also: Commonwealth v. Kennedy, 240 Pa. 214, 87 A. 605; Commonwealth ex rel. v. Boboleski, 303 Pa. 53, 153 A. 898.
Over 100 years ago in Bank of Virginia v. Adams, 1 Parsons 534, the Court said: “And where, from the nature and complications of a given case, its justice can best be reached by means of the flexible machinery of a Court of Equity, in short, where a full, perfect, and complete remedy cannot be afforded at law, equity extends its jurisdiction in furtherance of justice.”4 The officer of the Commonwealth designated to supervise the protection of the public health has found that these burning coal refuse disposal sites are inimical to the health and well-being of the public in the areas involved. The abatement and eradication of this menace to the public health calls for a remedy, immediate and efficacious. The majority of this Court would limit the Secretary of Health to a remedy totally inadequate under the circumstances.
I believe that only equity provides a remedy which can fully and expeditiously determine this situation and protect the public health and well-being. The situation calls for immediate action which equity, not the Air Pollution Control Act, can effect.
Mr. Chief Justice Bell and Mr. Justice Egberts join in this opinion.

Act of January 8, 1960, P. L. (1959) 2119, §§1-15, 35 P.S. §§4001-4015.

 Rogoff v. Buncher Co., 395 Pa. 477, 481, 151 A. 2d 83; Emerald Coal & Coke Co. v. Equitable Gas Co., 378 Pa. 591, 107 A. 2d 734.

 Rogoff, supra, 395 Pa. at 481; Commonwealth ex rel. Shumaker v. New York & Pennsylvania Co. Inc., 367 Pa. 40, 49, 79 A. 2d 439 and cases therein cited; Hannum v. Gruber, 346 Pa. 417, 31 A. 2d 99; Bethlehem v. Druckenmiller, 344 Pa. 170, 25 A. 2d 190.

 This statement was approved by this Court in Pennsylvania R.R. Co. v. Bogert, 209 Pa. 589, 601, 59 A. 100, and Pennsylvania State Chamber of Commerce v. Torquato, 386 Pa. 306, 329, 125 A. 2d 755.