26 Pa. Super. 296 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1904
Opinion by
We have decided in Donora Borough Extension, No. 86, of
The proceedings to annex a part of North Franklin township to the borough of Washington were pending and undetermined in the court of quarter sessions at the time of the passage of the act of April 22,1903, supra. Did the passage of the said act oust the jurisdiction of the court and terminate the proceedings therein ?
The general principle, as stated by our Supreme Court in the Hickory Tree Road, 43 Pa. 139, is that “ Where a law takes away a subject of jurisdiction, a proceeding founded upon it must fall, but that, when it merely changes the remedy, it may be otherwise and must be, unless the law plainly declare it otherwise.”
In chapter 17, treating of this subject, Judge Endlich, in his work on The Interpretation of Statutes, 677, says, in section 478 on the effect of repeal on pending proceedings — prosecutions : “ Where an act expires or is repealed, it is, as regards its operative effect, considered, in the absence of provision to the contrary, as if it had never existed, except as to matters and transactions past and closed. As to all future matters all steps yet to be taken, the repealed statute upon which they are based is treated as utterly obliterated, so that if, after rendition of judgment and pending an appeal therefrom, there has been a change or repeal of the law applicable to the rights of the parties, the appellate court must hear and decide the case according to the then existing law and, upon a second trial, the inferior court must recognize the change and conform to it, not to the law as it may have been at the time of the first trial.” And so, in section 480 upon the effect, etc., on rights and remedies founded solely on statute, he says: “ The same rule applies to rights and remedies founded solely upon statute and to suits pending to enforce such remedies. If, at the time the statute is repealed, the remedy has not been perfected or the right has not become vested but still remains executory, they are gone.”
So in North Canal Street Road, 10 Watts, 351, it- was held: “Acts entirely done under a statute, while it was in force, stand good after its repeal. But before these proceedings (which related to the opening of a road) were completed,
In Hampton v. Com., 19 Pa. 329, which was a scire facias issued upon a report of viewers, which had been duly confirmed, to recover damages for the opening of a street, it was held that the repeal of the act before the street was opened put an end to the opening of the street and rendered void all the proceedings under it, and that the parties in whose favor damages had been assessed could not recover the compensation reported in their favor, Mr. Chief Justice Black, in his opinion, saying : “ The repeal of the law at any time before the street was opened rendered all the proceedings under it void from the beginning. It is as if no such law had ever been passed. If the repeal had come after judgment rendered and after execution issued, it would have struck dead the process in the hands of the sheriff.”
In the case under consideration, an appeal from the action of the town council annexing a portion of Franklin township to the borough of Washington was pending in the court of quarter sessions at the time of the passage of the act of 1903, supra. The decree, confirming the action of the town council, was not made until after the passage of the act. By the terms? of that act, as we have construed it in the Donora Borough case, the right of appeal to the court of quarter sessions was taken away and the discretion in such cases lodged in the borough council. This, in our judgment, rendered the action of the court of quarter sessions subsequent to the repeal void. The hand of the court should, therefore, have been stayed, its jurisdiction having been taken away by the act of 1903, and the entire proceedings dismissed.
The act in question was more than a mere change of remedy, as is intimated by the court below. It conferred a right upon the petitioners to have the case heard and finally determined by the town council and gave new and enlarged jurisdiction to the council to determine, in their discretion, all questions relating to the annexation to the borough of adjacent territory;
Decree reversed, the proceedings pending in the court of quarter sessions on appeal dismissed, without prejudice to the right of the petitioners to proceed under the Act of April 22, 1908, P. L. 247, by petition, etc., and the record is remitted, in order that this decree may be carried into effect.