40 Pa. Super. 609 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1909
Opinion by
The plaintiff borough, upon petition of the requisite number of owners .of abutting property, graded, paved and curbed a street, under the provisions of the Act of April 23, 1889, P. L. 44, which authorizes an assessment upon abutting property under the foot front rule. The work was completed on November 26, 1906, and the borough engineer on January 3, 1907, made an assessment against the property of the defendant for the sum of $516. The statute under which the work was done did not authorize an assessment against the owner of the property personally, and the borough did not file a lien against the property under the authority conferred by that statute. The Act of April 4, 1907, P. L. 40, provides: “That hereafter all municipalities of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania may proceed for the recovery or collection of any municipal claim or claims whatsoever by lien or by an action of assumpsit.” The
The plaintiff is not entitled to recover in this action unless the statute of 1907 is to be given a retrospective effect; for at the time the work was done and until long after the assessment for it was made the defendant was not liable personally to be called upon to pay this charge. An assessment by a municipality for improving a street is a tax and cannot be collected as an ordinary debt by a common-law action, unless such remedy is- given by statute: McKeesport v. Fidler, 147 Pa. 532; Philadelphia v. Merklee, 159 Pa. 515; Philadelphia v. Bradfield, 159 Pa. 517; Franklin v. Hancock, 18 Pa. Superior Ct. 398; s. c., 204 Pa. 110. It is within the legislative power of the commonwealth to grant to municipalities a remedy for the collection of taxes against property by a personal action against the owner: Weber v. Reinhard, 73 Pa. 370; In re Centre Street, 115 Pa. 247; Vacation of Howard Street, 142 Pa. 601; Com. v. Mahon, 12 Pa. Superior Ct. 616. The legislation under which the borough proceeded to make this improvement authorized only an assessment upon the property benefited, to be enforced by a proceeding in rem against that property; it imposed no personal obliga
The general rule undoubtedly is that legislation which affects rights will not be construed to be retroactive unless it is explicitly so declared in the statute. But where it concerns merely the mode of procedure it is applied, as of course, to litigation existing at the time of its passage: Kille v. Reading Iron Works, 134 Pa. 225. Retrospective laws may be supported when they impair no contract and disturb no vested right, but only vary remedies, cure defects in proceedings otherwise fair, and do not vary existing obligations contrary to their situation when entered into and when prosecuted: Shonk v. Brown, 61 Pa. 320. “Retrospective laws generally, if not universally, work injustice, and ought to be so construed only when the mandate of the legislature is imperative:” Taylor v. Mitchell, 57 Pa. 209. “There is no canon of construction better settled than this, that a statute shall always be interpreted so as to operate prospectively and not retrospectively unless the language is so clear as to preclude all question as to the intention of the legislature:” Neff's Appeal, 21 Pa. 243; McCabe v. Emerson, 18 Pa. 111. These well-settled principles have never been departed from and have been recognized and reaffirmed in a long line of cases: Smith v. Railroad Company, 36 Pa. Superior Ct. 584; Com. v. Bessemer Company, 207 Pa. 302; Horn & Brennan Mfg. Co. v. Steelman, 215 Pa. 187; Lewis v. Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 220 Pa. 317. The principle established by these decisions rules this case. The act of 1907 contains no language which would warrant the construction that it was the legislative intention that the statute should have a retrospective effect.
The argument of the appellee, that the statute affects the remedy exclusively, is not well founded. The act imposes upon the owner of property a personal liability for claims against his property which, as to assessments of the character of that with
The judgment is reversed and the record remitted with a procedendo.