Borough v. Pottsville Gas Co.

Citations

• 39 Pa. Super. 1
• 1909 Pa. Super. LEXIS 430

Syllabus

<p>Municipalities — Ordinance—Motives of members of council — Evidence.</p> <p>1. The legality of the acts of legislative or corporate bodies cannot be tested by the motives of individual members or the adventitious circumstances they may lay hold of to carry their measures.</p> <p>Appeals — Assignments of error — Evidence.</p> <p>2. Where the admission of a paper in evidence is assigned as error, but the paper is not printed in appellant's paper-book, the assignment will be disregarded.</p> <p>3. Where an assignment of error to the admission of testimony fails to include in the assignment the testimony admitted, the assignment will not be considered.</p> <p>Boroughs — Ordinances—License fee — Openings in streets.</p> <p>4. The tribunal having jurisdiction to decide whether or not, under an agreed or duly ascertained state of facts, there being no conflict of evidence as to essential facts, an ordinance is unreasonable, is the court.</p> <p>5. An ordinance imposing a license fee for a permit to make an opening in a street amounting to $3.00 for each opening not exceeding three feet wide and thirty feet long and for any additional opening in width or length at the same time and place, five cents per square foot, is unreasonable and void where it appears that the borough expended nothing for supervision and inspection until three years after certain excavations sought to be charged for had been made, that it then employed a clerk to make out permits, and an assistant engineer, and the evidence for the company sought to be charged shows that the work of refilling had been carefully done, that defects had been promptly repaired, and that the permit charges claimed were greatly in excess of the actual cost of making, refilling and repairing the street openings made by the company.</p>