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 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.