Commonwealth Ex Rel. Shumaker v. New York & Pennsylvania Co.

79 A.2d 439, 367 Pa. 40
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMarch 19, 1951
DocketAppeal, 13
StatusPublished
Cited by57 cases

This text of 79 A.2d 439 (Commonwealth Ex Rel. Shumaker v. New York & Pennsylvania Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Commonwealth Ex Rel. Shumaker v. New York & Pennsylvania Co., 79 A.2d 439, 367 Pa. 40 (Pa. 1951).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mb. Justice Ladnee,

This is an appeal from the decree of the Dauphin County Court dismissing plaintiffs’ bill in equity for lack of jurisdiction of the court over the subject matter of the cause of action.

The action is in equity and was brought by the Commonwealth on relation of Clyde Shumaker, District Attorney of Butler County, and W. P. Geary, District Attorney of Clarion County, certain named persons individually and as officers of the Allegheny County. Sportsmen’s League, Inc., and by that corporation “on behalf of themselves, individually, as taxpayers and citizens, and all other persons, firms or corporations resident of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, similarly affected” against the New York and Pennsylvania *43 Company, Inc., a New York Corporation, R. M. Jones, Resident Manager, Dr. Norris W. Vanx, Admiral Milo P. Draemel, Richard Maize, Charles A. French, Elmer A. Holbrook, Frank M. Geer and H. L. Brownback. The seven last named, while not so styled, are in the bill of complaint averred to be members of the Sanitary Water Board of the Commonwealth.

The bill was filed to restrain a public nuisance and claims the corporate defendant and its resident manager discharge waste that defiles the waters of the Commonwealth. The bill in substance avers that the corporate defendant operates a pulp and paper mill at Johnsonburg, Elk County, and for a long time prior to the filing of the bill, particularly since August 2, 1948, said mill discharged and continues to discharge into the Clarion River and its tributaries, industrial waste composed of putrescible organic matter, noxious harmful materials and acids, in such quantity and intensity, as to pollute said waters and constitute the same inimical and injurious to the public health, to animal and aquatic life, and to the uses of said waters for domestic and industrial consumption and recreation. It avers that the action of the corporate defendant, and its manager, constitutes a public nuisance and its ill effects are destroying the public waters and tributary lands and have contaminated the air in the Clarion River Basin to the detriment and peril of the health of the residents of the riparian lands in the Clarion River Basin and extending into the Allegheny River south into the City of Pittsburgh.

The bill also avers that the pollution complained of is a public nuisance as declared by Article I, Sec. 3, of the Act of June 22, 1937, P.L. 1987, 35 P.S. 691.3; that the Sanitary Water Board has been notified of the actions of the company and has been petitioned to abate the nuisance on several occasions; that said *44 Board has approved an application for approval of plans purportedly designed to abate the nuisance and that the company has falsely represented in said application that its program will successfully abate the nuisance; that the company has knowingly misrepresented that it is in the process of eliminating the polluting industrial waste while continuing to discharge in excess of 20 million gallons of polluted water daily into the waters of the Commonwealth.

The prayer of the bill is for a preliminary injunction; for the corporate defendant to be required to answer the bill and to abate permanently the nuisance; asks that the individual defendants constituting the Sanitary Water Board be required to appear and cooperate with plaintiffs to effect the relief sought and that punitive damages be awarded.

The bill was filed December 19, 1949, and a rule to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not be issued was granted returnable January 16, 1950. To this rule the corporate defendant filed answer but that rule has not been disposed of because on January 26, 1950, the corporate defendant also filed preliminary objections questioning the jurisdiction of the court and on the same date filed a petition under the Act of March 5, 1925, P.L. 23, 12 P.S. 673, also challenging the jurisdiction of the court. Separate preliminary objections were filed by the Sanitary Water Board members denying inter alia, that they are proper parties to the bill in their individual capacity.

The plaintiffs filed motions to strike off the preliminary objections because facts were pleaded therein and because the objections were filed too late. The learned court below did not sustain the plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss but on the other hand did not consider any question other than that of jurisdiction which it correctly observed was properly before it because of *45 defendant’s petition filed under the Act of 1925, P.L. 23, 12 P.S. 673, raising the same question.

First, we must rule the preliminary objections are not before us on this appeal and must be properly disposed of by the court below in due course. We point out, however, in passing, that a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court whether as to parties, property or subject matter, cannot be raised by preliminary objections under Equity Eule 48. Such questions must be raised either by petition under Equity Eule 29 or under the Act of March 5, 1925, 1 supra: Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Co. v. Berkin, 299 Pa. 196, 149 A. 470 (1930); 8 Standard Pennsylvania Practice, Sections 133, 134. The only challenge to the jurisdiction proper under Eule 48 is that permitted by subdivision 6, viz., adequacy of the remedy at law: see Schuylkill Mining Company v. Indian Head Coal Co. et al., 352 Pa. 398, 43 A. 2d 93 (1945). Moreover the preliminary objections were here apparently filed too late: see Equity Eule 48; 8 Standard Pennsylvania Practice 270. The only question, therefore, before us on this appeal is the correctness of the court’s order dismissing the bill for lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter of the complaint.

This question must be determined here from the bill which we must accept as true for the purpose of this inquiry. None of the facts averred in the answer of the corporate defendant to the rule for a preliminary injunction have any place in the consideration of this *46 question. The narrow seope to which this inquiry must be confined was clearly restated recently by Mr. Justice Jones in Upholsterers’ International Union etc. v. United Furniture Workers, etc., 356 Pa. 469, 52 A. 2d 217 (1947), where he said, p. 472, 473, “The procedure prescribed by the Act of 1925 for testing jurisdiction fin the court of first instance’ applies to questions of jurisdiction either of the defendant or of the subject-matter: Welser v. Ealer, 317 Pa. 182, 184, 176 A. 429. In the present instance, the question involved goes to the jurisdiction of the cause of action (whereon the suit was instituted) which ‘. . . relates “solely to the competency of the particular court to determine controversies of the general class to which the case then presented for its consideration belongs”: Skelton v. Lower Merion Twp., 298 Pa. 471, 473. See also Koontz v. Messer, 314 Pa. 434’: Welser v. Ealer, supra, at p. 184. A court has jurisdiction of subject-matter if it is empowered to enter upon an inquiry for the competent hearing and determination of a controversy of such character.

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Bluebook (online)
79 A.2d 439, 367 Pa. 40, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/commonwealth-ex-rel-shumaker-v-new-york-pennsylvania-co-pa-1951.