198 A. 448 | Pa. | 1938
Alloy Metal Wire Company appealed from the Board of Revision of Taxes to the court of common pleas for a reduction of the assessment of its property in Prospect Park Borough. The Board and the company then filed a stipulation by which a reduction in value was agreed *431 upon, and the court below entered an order, establishing the assessment at the reduced figure. The Borough, not a party to the proceedings at any time, brings this appeal.
The Borough has no standing to appeal. To allow it would, in effect, permit the Borough to institute suit in this Court, a result not contemplated by the Act of May 22, 1933, P. L. 853. Section 520 of the Act did not make the various political subdivisions enumerated therein parties to the proceedings before the Board or the court below, when they do not appear. That section confers on the Borough, if aggrieved by an assessment, the right to appeal to the Board, the court of common pleas, or to the Supreme or Superior Court. But before appealing to this Court, the municipality must become a party to the case in the court below or before the Board. Section 520 provides that an appeal by a municipality shall be "subject to the same procedure, and with like effect, as if such appeal were taken by a taxable. . . ." And Section 519 specifically states that such appeals are to be taken "in the same manner as appeals are taken in other cases to the said Supreme or Superior Court."
Appellant's position is no better, as regards a review in this court, under our general appeal statute, the Act of May 22, 1722, 1 Sm. L. 131, Section 9.* That Act states ". . . anyperson . . . aggrieved with the judgment" may appeal, but it restricts the right of review in this Court to "the party . . . so aggrieved." The act provides therefore that all "persons aggrieved" to have the right to appeal should be "partiesaggrieved." *432
There is but one way to be made "a party" or litigant in a court, and that is to become one by appearing in the proceedings. Participation in some form in the court below is a requisite to appellant's right to review. See Steel v.Bridenbach, 7 W. S. 150, where the court quashed appellant's writ of error, on the ground that he was in the position of a stranger, not a party to the suit, and hence could not appeal; that "if dissatisfied . . . he should . . . have been put on the record, in some shape, as one of the parties to the suit." We stated flatly in Mechanics Nat. Bank of Trenton v. Buckman,
Since the Borough was not a party of record to proceedings in the court below it has no standing to appeal. The Act of 1933, by providing in Section 402 that the assessment figures apply to taxation for Borough purposes, and in then granting to the Borough a right to appeal from this assessment, recognized that the assessors and the Board do not "represent" the Borough in such a sense that the Borough can be considered, through them, a party to the proceedings. The Act does not grant to one not a party below the right to appeal.
Appeal quashed.
