85 Pa. Super. 548 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1925
Argued May 4, 1925. The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County entered judgment against the defendant for want of a sufficient affidavit of defense in a scire facias sur municipal *550 lien for water rent. The lien was filed November 13, 1918, for water rent due and unpaid for 1915. The affidavit of defense alleged that the property liened was a four-story brick school erected wholly by voluntary contributions of members of the church of the Epiphany Congregation and similarly maintained, open to all, free of charge without regard to creed, color, race or condition. While the affidavit does not specifically aver that the school is a purely public charity it set up as a defense to the scire facias the provision of section 5 of the Act of June 4, 1901, P.L. 364, (as amended by section 3 of the Act of May 28, 1915, P.L. 599), that "actual places of religious worship, places of burial not used or held for private or corporate profit, and institutions of purely public charity, shall not be subject to tax or municipal claims, except for the removal of nuisances, for sewer claims and sewer connections, or for the recurbing, paving, repaving, or repairing the footways in front thereof." The court overruled this contention on the ground that the Act of June 4, 1901, supra, was unconstitutional in so far as it attempted to legislate upon water rents, for want of notice thereof clearly expressed in its title.
The title of the Act of 1901, is, "An act providing when, how, upon what property, and to what extent, liens shall be allowed for taxes, and for municipal improvements, and for the removal of nuisances; the procedure upon claims filed therefor; the methods for preserving such liens and enforcing payment of such claims; the effect of judicial sales of the properties liened, and the manner of distributing the proceeds of such sales."a This court has already decided that water rents are not taxes: Rieker v. City of Lancaster,
The right to file municipal liens for water rents was first given the City of Pittsburgh by special act of March 7, 1843, P.L. 46, sec. 4, p. 47. This right was confirmed and established by the Acts of April 12, 1851, P.L. 419, sec. 8, p. 421, and February 20, 1857, P.L. 56. The city was thus in full possession of this right, as an established practice, when the Constitution of 1873 was adopted, and when it became a city of the second class, the Act of March 22, 1877, P.L. 16, was passed preserving this right in cities of the second class; and while section 12 of that act was held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Safe Deposit Trust Co. v. Fricke,
It follows that the court committed no error in entering judgment for want of a sufficient affidavit of defense, and the judgment is affirmed.
