Kennedy Township Road

Citations

• 50 Pa. Super. 619
• 1912 Pa. Super. LEXIS 109

Syllabus

<p>Constitutional law — Title of act — Road law — Act of February 24,1873, P. L. 155.</p> <p>1. The Act of February 24, 1873, P. L. 155, entitled “An Act relating to the office of surveyor and civil engineer for the County of Allegheny” is not insufficient in title and repugnant to the provisions of the constitutional amendment of 1864.</p> <p>2. While the courts are bound to declare an act unconstitutional, when the question is properly raised, and the invalidity of the act is clear, yet where the question is doubtful, the courts will consider, in favor of the constitutionality of the act, the fact that it has been on the statute book for a long period of time and continually practiced under, and that, although it had been in the courts for construction, its constitutionality had never been attacked.</p> <p>Road law — Laying out public road — Termini—Act of April 23,1909, 1909, P. L. 142.</p> <p>3. Under the Act of April 23, 1909, P. L. 142, which provides that a petition for laying out a public road “shall fix definitely the point of beginning and the point of ending in said petition by giving the exact distance from an intersecting public road, street, or railroad already opened,” the intersecting road, street or railroad is the one which intersects the public road upon which the terminal point of the road proposed to be laid out is situated. Any other construction of the act will render it meaningless.</p> <p>4. All statutes are to be so construed as to sustain, rather than to ignore them; to give them operation, if the language will permit, instead of treating them as meaningless.</p> <p>5. The Act of April 23, 1909, P. L. 142, is mandatory, and the omission to comply with it, where it can be complied with, is fatal.</p> <p>6. A petition for a public road is fatally defective which states that the road is “to lead from a point on the Pine Hollow Road near a bridge at or near the property of C. in said township to a point on the Pittsburg and Middletown Road at