The published Commonwealth Court preserved an excessive-force compensatory verdict but required remittitur because punitive damages improperly reflected alleged perjury during the civil trial.
The Commonwealth Court dismissed parole-violation charges with prejudice because the Board failed to prove a timely revocation hearing and could not cure its evidentiary failure after the hearing.
The Commonwealth Court reversed an upset tax sale because the bureau failed to send required first-class notice after certified delivery was unacknowledged, even though the owner learned of the sale.
The Commonwealth Court set aside an upset tax sale because the bureau failed to use readily available county records to locate the owner after certified notice was returned.
The Commonwealth Court upheld Act 111’s impairment-rating framework against retroactivity, nondelegation, and legislative-procedure challenges and affirmed modification to partial disability.
The Commonwealth Court held that every Phase I homeowner was indispensable to an action seeking to void a deed governing shared common areas because the requested relief would alter their property rights.
The Commonwealth Court held that minor wording changes to an advertised zoning amendment did not require a new hearing and could not support a challenge filed almost four years after enactment.
The Commonwealth Court held that a lieutenant-governor candidate cannot remain on Pennsylvania’s ballot after the paired gubernatorial candidate is removed.
The Commonwealth Court held that slaughtering cattle and preparing beef products did not substantially transform raw material enough to satisfy the Local Tax Enabling Act’s manufacturing exclusion.
The Commonwealth Court held that prison discipline delaying parole eligibility does not deprive a Pennsylvania inmate of a protected liberty interest.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania held that the 2020 amendment changing mandatory parole review for rape convicts from annual to triennial (61 Pa.C.S. § 6139(a)(3.3)) does not violate the ex post facto clause, because it alters only when the Board must conduct review—not the standards for granting parole or the Board’s authority to act on its own motion sooner.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania vacated a Beaver County trial court’s denial of a real estate tax exemption for a land conservation trust, holding that the trial court misapplied the HUP purely-public-charity test by merging the “charitable purpose” and “indefinite public benefit” factors, improperly requiring evidence of significant public visitation, and ignoring the Environmental Rights Amendment and the Charitable Purposes Act in the charitable-purpose analysis.
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reversed the denial of a license suspension appeal, holding that Court Administration’s ten-year failure to schedule a hearing — despite repeated court orders to do so — constituted an extraordinary government-caused delay that violated the licensee’s due process rights under the Middaugh framework and mandated dismissal of the suspension.