85 Pa. 163 | Pa. | 1877
delivered the opinion of the court, January 7th 1878.
This legislation required that absolute equality should be worked out between the cost of each improvement and the assessment of the fund for its payment. Whatever the merits of any particular case, the councils were given power to find some owner or owners of property somewhere upon whom, by the application of some wrenching process, the expenditure could be charged. Large as the power was, and arbitrary and oppressive in its execution as it must sometimes have been, its general exercise has been supported by the decisions of this court. McMasters v. The Commonwealth, 3 Watts 292, and the cases that have followed in its track, have extended the long-settled principle that local taxation is justifiable for local purposes, so as to sustain legislation that imposes on property benefited by a local improvement, or its owner, a tax in proportion to the superadded value of the property caused by the improvement, of which this property has a peculiar advantage beyond that of
Are the circumstances of this case such as to bring it within the operation of the settled rules ? The Act of 1871 undertook to apply to the construction of all bridges in the highways of Pittsburgh the provisions relating to sewers of the 12th section of the Act of 1864. The bridge over Saw-mill Run was built at a cost of §>11,764.70, and the expenses of the two views increased the amount to §>12,249.43. This sum was assessed, by the last view, on a multitude of properties, situated on eleven different streets, alleys and avenues; in what was called, in the report, the “ Oberhelm Plan of Lots;” in Shalersville; and in what was called the “ Acre Assessment.” The lots were charged at different rates, ranging from ton cents per foot in Shalersville, to seventy-five cents per foot on Main street. Except in a part of Main street, where the amount of the charge was forty cents, the rates on all the lots in each of the streets were uniform, irrespective of their relative distances from the bridge. In the “ Acre Assessment” Mrs. Denny was assessed for eighty acres at eight dollars per acre, and thirty-one other properties, containing quantities reaching from half an acre to thirty acres, were returned at the uniform rate of six dollars and sixty-one cents. In this schedule one body of ninety-one lots were returned at two dollars a lot; two parcels of land containing together seven acres, at twenty dollars, and one parcel of nine acres at ten dollars por acre. It would seem impossible, in the very nature of the case, that anything like even approximate accuracy or equality could have been attained in such an assessment. A variety of cases can be conceived where persons to whom the bridge would be a peculiar advantage for exceptional reasons, might bo entirely omitted in the report, and persons to whom and to whose property it could bring no earthly benefit, might be assessed. Unlike a sewer, and unlike a highway in front of a merchant’s store or a tradesman’s shop, a peculiar local advantage derived from the
Main street is a public thoroughfare of the city of Pittsburgh. It was formerly the line of the Pittsburgh and Hoblestown Plank-road Company, running through what was then the borough of Temperanceville. On the 6th of July 1872 the borough purchased from the company the portion of the road within the corporate boundaries, for the consideration of $2000. ' Saw-mill Run crosses Main street, as the thoroughfare ivas called after the purchase, within the borough limits, and Avhen the' street was graded and paved, the plank-road bridge was left to stand. Later in 1872, the borough of Temperanceville was consolidated with the city of Pittsburgh, and on the 23d of December, in that year, the city councils began proceedings for the erection of the new bridge, the assessment of the cost of which is the subject of this controversy. Can this be called a lo'cal improvement, especially benefiting particular individuals and for which they should be compelled to pay ? SaAVmill Run crosses a public highAvay of the city. The bridge over it was built in the line of this highway ^inwhich every inhabitant of Pittsburgh,, mazy have some interest, and every citizen of Allegheny county and of the Commonwealth is entitled to assert some right. In such an improvement, surely no citizen can have exclusively private right and he can scarcely have any definable private interest. The bridge Avas constructed to serve an apparent and essential public'purpose, and to impose the cost of it on individuals selected out of the mass of the community on any conceivable-rule ihat viewers could adopt, would be the placing of public burdens on private■ shoulders. 'Among the cases collected in Hammett v. Philadelphia, 15 P. F. Smith 146, was that of The Tide-water Company v. Coster, 3 C. E. Greene 518. In that case Chief Justice Beasley said that, “ a legislative act authorizing the building of a public bridge and directing the expenses to be assessed on A., B., and C., such persons not being in any way peculiarly benefited by such a structure, Avould not be an act of taxation but a condem
It is by no means clear that these proceedings were not fatally defective upon another ground. The Act of 1871 authorized the construction of bridges in the lines of the highways of Pittsburgh. Does this provision warrant the removal of any existing bridge, and the building of another, at private cost, at the option of the city councils ? If so, how often may the change be made, and wdiere shall the limit of the citizens’ liability be fixed? The borough of Temperanceville paid the Plank-road Company two thousand dollars for their road and bridge out of the funds of the municipality. To these funds the taxes on the properties of these complainants presumably contributed. The old structure afforded a passage across the run, and the new one did no more. A strict construction is required of legislation that imposes unequal burdens, just as it is required of legislation that creates exceptional privileges and immunities. The- exigencies of the case do not require a decision of the point, but it may well be that the re-construction of a bridge was not within the legislative intention when the Act of 1871 was passed.
A great variety of questions came up in the mass of materials of which the record consists. The view that has been taken of the rights of the parties saves all need for their discussion.
The order of the Court of Quarter Sessions of the 26th of November 1875, confirming the report of the viewers, is reversed, and the report is set aside.