375 Pa. 35 | Pa. | 1953
Opinion by
This case involves the right of the plaintiff corporation to exemption from local real estate taxation as a quasi-public body performing a service essential to
While the basis for the exemption from local taxation of real estate of quasi-public corporations performing essential public services has unvaryingly been ascribed to this court’s early pronouncement in Schuylkill Bridge Co. v. Frailey, 13 S. & R. 422 (1826), the decision in that case was in no sense a judicial promulgation of an exemption from taxation. Nor could it have been intended so to be. A court is without power to create such an exemption. “Exemption is controlled by the Constitution and by statute [footnote indicated] . ‘The claimant of exemption from taxation must show affirmative legislation in support of his claim, and his case must be clearly within it.’ ”: Dougherty v. Philadelphia, 314 Pa. 298, 301-302, 171 A. 583, quoting from Philadelphia v. Barber, 160 Pa. 123, 126, 28 A. 644. Certain it is that exemption from taxation of property of public utilities does not derive from any existing statute.
What the Schuylkill Bridge Co. case decided, and all that it decided, was that the privately owned toll bridge involved in that case was not within the category of items of property specified by the taxing statute there in question (Act of April 11, 1799, 4 Dall.
Subsequent cases extended the exclusory legislative intent perceived in the Schuylkill Bridge Co. case, supra, to other forms of property corporately owned and operated and ascribed additional reasons for the legislature’s adjudicated failure to subject property of quasi-public bodies to local taxation by general statutes : see, e.g., Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co. v. Northampton County, 8 W. & S. 334, and Conoy Township v. York Haven Electric Power Plant Co., 222 Pa. 319,
Nor does the exemption derive alone from the restricted meaning in a tax statute of the term “real estate” in relation to the property of a public utility, as suggested in the Conoy case, supra. It is also necessary that a claimant of such exemption qualify in all respects as a quasi-public body performing a service essential to the public welfare. See Philadelphia Rural Transit Co. v. Philadelphia, 309 Pa. 84, 159 A. 861, where relief from local property taxes was denied a bus company. In that case Mr. Justice Maxey, speaking for this court, said (p. 97),- — “A corporation cannot obtain judicial recognition as quasi public unless the service it renders to the public or a large part of it are so essential to public well-being that any interference with its functions by local administrative
The sole question, then, is whether the plaintiff corporation is a quasi-public body performing an essential public service. The supportable, indeed the indisputable, findings of the learned court of common pleas leave no doubt that it is. The corporation furnished all of the houses in Longvue Acres (322 in number) and a school outside the housing development but within the corporation’s certificated area with sewage disposal facilities. It had, in addition, applications for such services from a local religious school, a Home for Incurables and a new public school, all likewise outside the Longvue Acres development but within the corporation’s chartered area. The services to these latter applicants, when their buildings are constructed, will be taken care of by expanded facilities presently under construction by the corporation for the purpose of serving its certificated area. The corporation is also able to serve 250 additional private homes, upon application, with sewage disposal facilities. The dwell
It would be difficult to imagine a more truly quasi-public body or one devoted to a more essentially necessary public service than the present appellee. It must afford the whole of a specified geographical area with sewage disposal facilities subject to regulation by the State both as to the rates and adequacy of the services furnished; and, while it is protected by the State from competition, it concomitantly bears the responsibility properly attaching to the public grant of a monopolistic license. Undeniably, the services which the company renders are of a character in which the sovereign is highly interested and which rarely, if ever, are the subject of competitive business for profit. Naturally, the State has the greatest solicitude for all efforts to obviate or, at least, to minimize dangers to public health. Indeed, the developed housing area here involved would not be permitted to be without sewage disposal facilities of some character. Like the Superior Court, we fully accord with the well-reasoned conclusion of Judge Kenneot for the court of common pleas.
Order affirmed.
Most of the reasons so advanced for the imputed legislative intent to exempt were found later to be untenable and, accordingly, were rejected, but the ascribed intent continued to be applied unquestioningly. For a discriminating review of the cases and a well-reasoned discussion of the subject, see article entitled “Exemption of Real Property of Public Utilities from Local Taxation in Pennsylvania” by William O. Walker, a member of the bar of Allegheny County, in University of Pittsburgh Law Review, Volume 13, p. 263.