Lower Merion Township v. Postal Telegraph Cable Co.

Citations

• 25 Pa. Super. 306
• 1904 Pa. Super. LEXIS 60

Syllabus

<p>Townships — Townships of the first class■ — Powers of commissioners — Ordinances for the protection of highways — Telegraph and telephone poles — License tax — Province of court and fury — Act of April 28,1899, P. L. 104.</p> <p>Under the Act of April 28, 1899, P. L. 104, commissioners of townships of the first class have no powers but what are expressly granted them, and such implied powers as are necessary for the proper performance of their duties under their expressly granted powers, and the accomplishment of the objects for which they were conferred.</p> <p>Strictly speaking, the power to take all needful means for securing the safety of persons and property within the township, and to adopt by-laws and ordinances prescribing the manner in which the specially enumerated powers shall be carried out, and, generally, regulating the township affairs to whiclvsuch powers appertain, is not an implied, but an express, power.</p> <p>The safe-keeping of the highways within the limits of a township of the first class is under the act of April 28, 1899, a township affair, concerning which the township commissioners have power to legislate.</p> <p>To render ordinances and by-laws reasonable they should tend in some degree to the accomplishment of the objects for which the corporation was created, and its powers conferred.</p> <p>Under the Act of April 28, 1899, P. L. 104, commissioners of townships of the first class have the power to impose by ordinance a reasonable license tax on telegraph and telephone companies for each telegraph or telephone pole in the township.</p> <p>In an action by a township of the first class against a telegraph company to recover a license tax under an ordinance which imposed a tax of fifty cents per pole without any tax on wire, an affidavit of defense is sufficient to prevent judgment which avers that the license tax was not based upon the cost for inspection by the township, that it was more than twenty times the amount that might have be