Deane v. Edgeworth Borough Board of Adjustment

94 A.2d 112, 172 Pa. Super. 502, 1953 Pa. Super. LEXIS 370
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedJanuary 20, 1953
DocketAppeal, No. 100
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 94 A.2d 112 (Deane v. Edgeworth Borough Board of Adjustment) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Deane v. Edgeworth Borough Board of Adjustment, 94 A.2d 112, 172 Pa. Super. 502, 1953 Pa. Super. LEXIS 370 (Pa. Ct. App. 1953).

Opinion

Opinion by

Dithrich, J.,

This is an appeal from an order of the County Court of Allegheny County sustaining the action of the Board of Adjustment of the Borough of Edgeworth affirming the refusal of the building inspector to issue a building permit.

Lorena Deane, appellant, acquired title to a parcel of land in Edgeworth Borough by deed dated February 16, 1951. The property is at the northeast corner of Chestnut Road and Beaver Road. It has a frontage of 434.45 feet on Chestnut Road and a depth of 196.76 feet. There is a three-story main dwelling house set back 85 feet from Chestnut Road, about 128 feet from the east side line and 55 feet from the rear property line. A two-story frame building, about 43 by 40 feet in area, stands in the upper right, or northeast corner of the lot, about 5.5 feet from the rear property line and about 10 feet from the east side line. This building, with the main dwelling house, was erected prior to 1900. It was originally designed and actually used as a stable. It now serves as a four-car garage. Since 1904 no housekeeping has been done in the building; there are no quarters or facilities for housekeeping, cooking, or sleeping.

Appellant applied to the building inspector of Edge-worth Borough for permission to remodel part of the structure into a six-room apartment for purposes of rental to persons other than the owner of the main or residential building. The application was refused. On June 11, 1951, an appeal was taken from this refusal to the Borough Board of Adjustment. A public hearing was held on June 18, 1951. The appeal was dismissed for the reason stated that the proposed use of the frame building would not be a use accessory to the main single-family dwelling under the requirements of the Zoning Ordinance.

[505]*505Appellant then petitioned the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County to allow an appeal from the decision of the Board of Adjustment. The appeal was allowed but the record was subsequently certified to the County Court of Allegheny County, as provided by section (k) of Act No. 205 of 1951, P. L. 994, 17 PS §626.

After a hearing de novo before Benches., P. J., at which time witnesses for both sides were heard, the appeal was dismissed. The court, in a memorandum opinion, stated that it saw no grounds for reversal. Exceptions were filed to the opinion of the hearing judge and on February 26, 1952, after argument before a court en banc, the exceptions were overruled. The appeal is before us for review as on certiorari. Crawford Zoning Case, 358 Pa. 636, 57 A. 2d 862.

The court below found that the Board of Adjustment had sustained the building inspector on the basis of two Borough ordinances. The first is Ordinance No. 257, the Zoning Ordinance. This was passed on December 20, 1949, at a time long after the structure under discussion had come to be used exclusively as a garage and before the Deanes had acquired the property. These are the pertinent sections of the ordinance :

“Section 301. ... A building may be erected, altered, or used [in the residential area in which the lot under discussion is located], and a lot may be used or occupied for any of the following purposes and no other:
“1. Single family detached dwelling.
“2. Accessory use on the same lot with and customarily incidental to any of the foregoing permitted uses. The term ‘accessory use’ shall not include a business, professional office or studio or rooms for home occupations. . . .
[506]*506“Section 302. . . .
“5. . . . There shall be a rear yard on each lot which shall be not less than twenty-five (25) feet in depth.”

There is no dispute before this Court, nor was there in the proceedings below, over the validity and applicability of the Zoning Ordinance. Appellant seeks a variance from the set-back provisions as provided for in the ordinance, although not requested of the Board of Adjustment. She contended in the court below and before this Court that her property conforms to all restrictions placed on the area except for the width of the back yard.

The Subdivision Ordinance, passed and approved September 19, 1950, provides that no lot or parcel of land may be divided into two or more lots, and no permit to erect, alter, or repair any building on a subdivision may be issued until a subdivision plan has been approved by the Borough. The parties have stipulated that appellant obtained no such approval; nor does it appear that she sought such approval. She maintains that, although the ordinance was regularly enacted and is an ordinance of the Borough, at the time of its enactment the Borough did not have the power to pass such an ordinance. The Legislature did not specifically authorize the boroughs of the Commonwealth to enact subdivision ordinances until July 19, 1951 (P. L. 1026, §7, 53 PS §13731). However, the general power to regulate the planning of streets and the arrangement of lots was granted to the boroughs in 1927 (P. L. 519) and in more detail in 1947 (P. L. 1621, 53 PS §13251).

Appellant further maintains that, if the ordinance is valid, it is ineffective as against her because it was not recorded, as required by the Act of May 20, 1949, P. L. 1531, 53 PS §271, in the office of the Recorder of Deeds of Allegheny County. That Act, as clearly [507]*507appears from the title, requires the filing of “copies of building ordinances” and makes no application to subdivision ordinances.

Furthermore, neither the Board of Adjustment nor the court below based its decision on appellant’s failure to meet the requirements of the Subdivision Ordinance. The question was not raised before the Board; it was raised by appellant for the first time on appeal to the court below and in our opinion is not material to the disposition of the issue before us. The Board of Adjustment based its decision solely on the ground that the variance was not an accessory use.

In the appeal from the Board of Adjustment the only question properly before the court below was whether the Board, in refusing the variance requested, was guilty of a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion: Reininger Zoning Case, 362 Pa. 116, 117, 66 A. 2d 225; Berman v. Exley, 355 Pa. 415, 417, 50 A. 2d 199. “Only where the record clearly establishes an arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable determination or a clear violation of positive law will appellate courts interfere with the exercise of an administrative duty by officials entrusted therewith”: Triolo v. Exley, 358 Pa. 555, 558, 57 A. 2d 878; quoted in Reininger Zoning Case, supra, at p. 118. The duty of this Court is to determine whether there was evidence to justify the action taken below. Fleming v. Prospect Park Board of Adjustment, 318 Pa. 582, 178 A. 813.

Appellant relies almost solely upon the Crawford Zoning Case, supra. There the lower court had affirmed the action of a Township Board of Adjustment in refusing a variance. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court and allowed the owner of a coach house, a building similar to the type concerned here, to make alterations and to use the building as his residence, although its position was closer to the property line [508]*508than that prescribed by the Zoning Ordinance. The circumstances, however, were materially different from those pertaining here. The building in the Crawford

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Related

Binder v. Pottstown Borough
10 Pa. D. & C.2d 166 (Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, 1955)
Walker v. ZONING BD. OF ADJ.(et Al.)
110 A.2d 414 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1955)
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2 Pa. D. & C.2d 734 (Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, 1954)

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Bluebook (online)
94 A.2d 112, 172 Pa. Super. 502, 1953 Pa. Super. LEXIS 370, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/deane-v-edgeworth-borough-board-of-adjustment-pasuperct-1953.