Court Opinion

ID: 9756837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:03:19.189924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:31.286502
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge SIMPSON.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because it finds waiver of the controlling issues which were fully litigated by the parties and addressed by the trial court.
The City condemned approximately 43 acres of Condemnees’ 47.5 acre property outside the City in Valley Township. The land included Condemnees’ restored 250-year-old farmhouse in which they raised their children, though the farmhouse itself was excepted from the taking (Excepted Tract). The City proposed to locate on the land a regional recreation center, including a golf course and golf-training center.
Condemnees filed preliminary objections to the taking. They raised various issues, including
1. Although the [City] repeatedly stated that it would not take the home of Condemnees, [City] has essentially isolated Condemnees’ home by drawing a square completely around the Con-demnees’ home so that it would be surrounded by the condemned property thereby isolating the Condemnees and their families, whose properties now adjoin the Condemnees’ property, from each other. These actions are in bad faith, an abuse of discretion, fraudulent, and not justifiable.
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p. [City] caused a de facto taking of Condemnees’ Property based on the size and location of the area condemned, thereby causing substantial deprivation to the Condemnees of the beneficial use and enjoyment of their remaining property. Further, such action constitutes an abuse of discretion and bad faith by the [City].
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r. [City] has sought to condemn large portions of Condemnees’ Property based on questionable and unreliable information. Such action constitutes an abuse of discretion and bad faith, and the justification for this condemnation has no reasonable basis.
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*858t. In toto, the [City’s] acts and omissions are: illegal, made in bad faith, fraudulent, an abuse of discretion, arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.
Reproduced Record (R.R.) at 488a-89a (emphasis added).
Significant litigation ensued. Ultimately, the trial court sustained Condemnees’ preliminary objections challenging the creation of the Excepted Tract. The trial court noted several significant deficiencies in the Excepted Tract after partial condemnation. In particular, the Excepted Tract was left without a water source, without a sanitary sewage disposal field, without frontage on a public road, and without sufficient acreage to lawfully maintain the existing use. The trial court found that these conditions were contrary to City Council’s direction for the extraterritorial partial taking, which required that the Excepted Tract “be designed so as to be lawful and in compliance with Valley Township’s zoning regulations.” Trial Ct. Op., January 11, 2002, at 93-94. Also, after discussing “the City’s failure to conduct a sufficient factual and legal investigation before determining the configuration of [the Excepted Tract],” id. at 86, 44 A.2d 589, the trial court found “that the particular configuration and location of [the Excepted Tract] was both manifestly unreasonable and the direct product of the misapplication of law.” Id. at 97, 44 A.2d 589. The trial court concluded:
11) The failure of the excepted parcel to comply with the express direction of City Council is the product of and evidences arbitrariness, caprice, error of law, and abuse of discretion.
Id. at 100, 44 A.2d 589.
In summary, Condemnees’ challenges included preliminary objections explicitly raising the configuration, size and location of the taking and whether the extent of the taking was based on questionable and unreliable information. These issues were fully litigated and resolved in favor of Con-demnees. Also, Condemnees’ challenges included preliminary objections that the City’s actions were “illegal, made in bad faith, fraudulent, an abuse of discretion, arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” These issues were fully litigated and resolved in favor of Condemnees.
In view of the foregoing, I decline to duck the litigated issues and reverse the trial court on a tortured application of waiver.
Rather, I would affirm the trial court based on the express statutory mandate to “determine promptly all preliminary objections and make such preliminary and final orders and decrees as justice shall require .... ” Section 406(e) of the Eminent Domain Code, 26 P.S. § l-406(e). In my view, the statutory mandate is intentionally broad, empowering the trial court to fairly deal with existing circumstances, rather than relying on the legislature to specifically anticipate each issue which the ingenuity of counsel can devise. Findings of arbitrariness, caprice, error of law and abuse of discretion justify the trial court’s exercise of its broad, express authority to do justice. See Weber v. Philadelphia, 437 Pa. 179, 262 A.2d 297 (1970); Winger v. Aires, 371 Pa. 242, 89 A.2d 521 (1952); In Re Heidelberg Township for Footpath, etc., 58 Pa.Cmwlth. 321, 428 A.2d 282 (1981).