City of Philadelphia v. Delaware County Board of Assessment Appeals

691 A.2d 992, 1997 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 96
CourtCommonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedFebruary 28, 1997
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 691 A.2d 992 (City of Philadelphia v. Delaware County Board of Assessment Appeals) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Philadelphia v. Delaware County Board of Assessment Appeals, 691 A.2d 992, 1997 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 96 (Pa. Ct. App. 1997).

Opinions

FLAHERTY, Judge.

The Interboro School District (District) appeals from an order of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas (trial court) granting summary judgment in favor of the City of Philadelphia (City) which is seeking to have an air mail processing facility (Building), owned by the United States Postal Service (USPS), taken off the tax roles in that county. We affirm.

In 1966, the City of Philadelphia (City) entered into an agreement (Agreement) with Delaware County, Tinieum Township, Tini-cum Township School Board (predecessor to the Appellant, Interboro School District), and Delaware County Institutional District (collectively Tax Authority). This Agreement permitted the City to expand the boundaries of the Philadelphia International Airport (Airport) into the jurisdiction of the Tax Authority. Pursuant to that Agreement, the City is subject to real estate taxes on all buildings at the Airport, within the jurisdiction of the Tax Authority, that are used for private enterprise. Therefore, the City has tax liability for airline hangars, oil company facilities, and airline kitchens. Also, the City must pay a fixed annual rate for runways, roadways, and taxiways.

In 1988, the City entered into a lease agreement (Lease) with USPS for a period of eighteen years with renewal options, at the expiration thereof, every five years for twenty-five years. The USPS paid for the design and construction of the Building which it has occupied since 1992. This facility services Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware. The Tax Authority imposed real estate taxes on the City for the USPS Building. The City filed an appeal with the Delaware County Board of Assessment Appeals (Board) challenging the real estate tax assessment. The Board denied the appeal. The City appealed to the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas.

Before the trial court, all parties agreed to have the matter decided by motion for summary judgment under a joint stipulation of facts. The City argued that the Building was not subject to real estate taxes under the express terms of the Agreement, the Building was exempt from real estate taxes because it was public property used for a public purpose, and that the USPS Building was immune from taxation under the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity. The trial court granted summary judgment on all three theories.

The first issue raised by the District on appeal is whether conflicting interpretations of the terms of the Agreement give rise to a genuine issue of fact in determining whether the Building is subject to taxation under those terms as applied to the joint stipulation of facts.

Our scope of review of a trial court’s grant of summary judgment is limited to determining whether the trial court made an error of law or abused its discretion. Salerno v. LaBarr, 159 Pa.Cmwlth. 99, 632 A.2d 1002, 1003 (1993). Summary judgment should only be granted in a clear case, and the moving party bears the burden of demonstrating that no material issue of fact remains. Id. at 1004. The record must be reviewed in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Id.

The District argues that the Agreement is ambiguous requiring the trial court to examine extrinsic evidence to interpret it. Consequently, there are various interpretations of the terms of the Agreement itself which yield a multitude of factual disputes thereby precluding a motion for summary judgment. Our Supreme Court stated that “the intent of the parties is to be ascertained [995]*995from the document itself when the terms are clear and unambiguous.” Hutchison v. Sunbeam Coal Corp., 513 Pa. 192, 200, 519 A.2d 385, 390 (1986) (citing Steuart v. McChesney, 498 Pa. 45, 48-49, 444 A.2d 659, 661 (1982)). Extrinsic evidence is admissible, when an ambiguity exists in an agreement, to clarify or explain the ambiguity. Id. (citing Herr Estate, 400 Pa. 90, 161 A.2d 32 (1960)). However, “the court, as a matter of law, determines the existence of an ambiguity and interprets the contract whereas the resolution of conflicting parol evidence relevant to what the parties intended by the ambiguous provision is for the trier of fact.” Id. (citing Easton v. Washington County Insurance Co., 391 Pa. 28, 137 A.2d 332 (1957)). Therefore, the specific issue is whether the trial court committed an error of law or abused its discretion when it determined, as a matter of law, that the terms of the Agreement were clear and unambiguous, thereby precluding the introduction of extrinsic evidence to explain those terms, and, after applying those terms to the joint stipulation of facts, determined that the City was entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law because there were no relevant issues of material fact remaining for resolution. We answer in the negative.

The District’s argument requires us to examine several terms of the Agreement for ambiguity. The trial court’s determination of whether certain terms within the Agreement are ambiguous is a conclusion of law. Therefore, the trial court’s decision regarding each contested term is completely reviewable by this court. Mueller v. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing, 657 A.2d 90, 93 (Pa.Cmwlth.1995). Ambiguity in a contract exists when its terms are “susceptible of different constructions and capable of being understood in more than one sense.” Hutchison, 513 Pa. at 201, 519 A.2d at 390. Absent such an ambiguity, the court must apply the plain meaning approach because it enhances reliability and it is not the province of the court to rewrite an agreement between two parties. Steuart, 498 Pa. at 49-51, 444 A.2d at 662-63. However, when determining whether a term is ambiguous, “a court must not rely upon a strained contrivance to establish one; scarcely an agreement could be conceived that might not be unreasonably contrived into the appearance of ambiguity. Thus, the meaning of language cannot be distorted to establish the ambiguity.” Id. at 663 (citing Anstead v. Cook, 291 Pa. 335, 337, 140 A. 139, 140 (1927)).

The District maintains that the Tax Authority can tax any building constructed by the City on City owned property for the purpose of leasing to private tenants. Paragraph 6 of the Agreement provides the following:

It is agreed by all parties [to this agreement] that all buildings which shall be constructed in the future by the City of Philadelphia on City owned property in Delaware County for the primary purpose of leasing to private tenants shall be taxable by the Delaware County taxing authorities signatory hereto.

The District maintains that there is ambiguity in the term “constructed in the future by the City of Philadelphia” and that the term means that the City only has to be a party to the construction and not the only party to the construction. Furthermore, the District maintains that the City was a party because it was intimately involved in constructing the Building.

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691 A.2d 992, 1997 Pa. Commw. LEXIS 96, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-philadelphia-v-delaware-county-board-of-assessment-appeals-pacommwct-1997.