Kittanning Borough v. Kittanning Consolidated Natural Gas Co.

Citations

• 26 Pa. Super. 355
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 320

Syllabus

<p>Taxation — Gas companies — License tax — Municipalities — Boroughs— Police power.</p> <p>The power of a borough governed bythe general borough law, to provide by ordinance for police supervision and inspection by its officers and servants of pipes laid and maintained under its streets by incorporated gas companies, and, as part of and incidental to such provision, to ordain the payment by such companies of a reasonable annual license fee or tax, is derived from the same source, and is sustained and governed by the same general principles, as its power to enact similar ordinances relative to the police supervision and inspection of poles and wires of telegraph, telephone and electric light companies. The fact that the latter are maintained upon the surface of the streets and the former are laid underneath the surface does not prevent the application of these principles.</p> <p>The right of the public in a city or borough street is by no means confined to the surface of the way, and this all those who set apart land for a street are conclusively presumed to know.</p> <p>In an action by a borough to recover a license tax imposed in the exercise of the police power for the inspection aud supervision of the pipes of a gas company beneath the surface of the streets, the borough is not bound in the first place to prove that the amount of the tax is reasonable. The burden is on the gas company to prove that it is unreasonable.</p> <p>In such a case unless the court is able to say from the facts of which it may take judicial cognizance, or from the undisputed or admitted facts, or if there be a conflict of evidence, then from the duly ascertained facts, that the ordinance is a revenue measure under ‘the guise' of a police regulation, or that the license fee is grossly in excess of what was necessary to cover the reasonably to be anticipated expenses of proper police supervision, it is not justified in interfering.</p> <p>Even where there is a conflict of evidence and the