Posted on 05/28/2002 1:07:38 PM PDT by calvin sun
In an opinion submitted to Commonwealth Court earlier this month, Common Pleas Judge William P. Mahon told the court that comments made by the city in recent weeks had misrepresented his position in deciding that the city had the right to take a portion of the farm belonging to Dick and Nancy Saha for use as a regional recreational center and golf course.
Mahon said the officials had tried to make it appear as though they had no choice but to backtrack on their earlier position of letting the Sahas keep their house, and start proceedings to take the entire farm. He said they also tried to blame him for the new tactic.
"To be sure, the desire of local elected officials to shift to the judiciary the political cost of controversial decisions is well known and deserves no comment," Mahon wrote in a seven-page document titled "Further Supplemental Opinion" and submitted to the Commonwealth Court on May 13.
"However, the apparent means chosen by the city council for the realization of this desire; involving, as it would see, a public campaign of misdirection by misquotation of judicial edicts requires, in our judgment, further evidentiary exploration and, if so found on the basis of evidence properly admitted, further analysis," he wrote.
In layman's terms, the judge wants city officials to explain themselves, and afterwards might rethink his earlier ruling.
The statements made by the city "would, we believe, bear consideration on our finding relating to the correctness of our prior conclusion that the (city's) governing body acted reasonably and with proper motives," Mahon wrote.
The opinion, which received little public notice when it was filed two weeks ago, caught some observers by surprise, saying they had not seen its likes before. Mahon, seeming to anticipate that reaction, opened his opinion by telling the Commonwealth Court he was filing it "with a profound sense of regret and full awareness of the unusual nature" of the opinion.
"It is unusual," said one attorney familiar with the case, who asked to remain anonymous. "I've never seen one before. For all I know it may be the first (such opinion)."
City Solicitor John Carnes, who said he had read the opinion, declined comment on the matter.
The Sahas' attorney Robert Lentz said he has no quarrels with the judge's opinion.
"I think Judge Mahon felt he had been misquoted. I think anybody's not going to be happy by being misquoted," he said.
Lentz said he and the Sahas plan to take a "wait and see" attitude when it comes to the case. He said the appellate court could decide "today, next week or three months from now to send the case back." Or, he continued, they may hear the appeal.
He would not comment on whether Mahon's opinion represented a step in the right direction for the Sahas. "As they say: It's not over 'til the fat lady sings. What will make the Sahas sleep easier is when it's determined finally their property can't be condemned," Lentz said.
The opinion came as part of Mahon's response to an appeal filed by the city of a ruling he made in January that favored the city, but only partially.
In it, he said the city did have the right to condemn by the right of eminent domain a part of the Saha's farm for the recreation center. But, he said, the city had gone about the process in a procedurally incorrect way by not filing a proper subdivision plan with Valley.
He suggested that that the city should file that plan, and said when its filing had been acted on he would revisit the matter.
The city, instead, appealed his ruling to the Commonwealth Court. In responding to the appeal, Mahon said that although the city had the right to take the matter to an appeals court, he believed his January ruling was not a final order in the case and was thus "interlocutory" and not appealable.
It was in his additional opinion that Mahon wrote his ruling had been publicly misrepresented by Coatesville officials, in both spoken and written comments.
His opinion was submitted to the court just days after the city officials ran a two-page newspaper ad some have called a heavy-handed public relations push to garner support for the regional recreation center. It came on the heels of the city's announcment of its intentions to scrap its plans to condemn a large portion of the Sahas' farm and instead condemn the entire property.
(Those plans are now on hold, coming after Mahon ruled that the Sahas' land had properly been made a part of a West Caln Agricultural Security District. That move places additional obstacles in the city's path to acquiring the land.)
City Manager Paul G. Janssen Jr. explained at the time the plans had changed after attempts to negotiate an agreement with the Sahas were unsuccessful. Janssen added that "the judge also made it clear that if we couldn't reach an agreement we have every right to take all the land."
But Mahon wrote this, and other statements, misrepresented his ruling.
"In fact," Mahon wrote, none of the "judicial pronouncement in this case, has even considered; much less 'made clear' (that the city has) every right to take all the (Sahas') land.'"
He also wrote that, "the statement made by the city manager on numerous occasions and widely reported to the effect that this court granted prior approval to the city's condemnation of the remaining six acres of the Saha homestead is simply not correct."
Mahon went on to write that statements made by city officials in the two-page advertisement also misrepresented his ruling.
Included in the parts of the ad Mahon cited was a sentence that read: "According to Judge Mahon, the Sahas' rejection of his solution put them "at the peril" of losing their home and the remaining six acres."
"The paid advertisement and its representation that the city is acting only as the court directed flies in the face of the reality of the city's appeal from this court's interlocutory order and refusal to engage in the proceedings mandated by our adjudication," Mahon wrote.
But Janssen, reached in his office Friday, maintained the city officials stood by what was in the ad. He said he has "no intentions of running a retraction."
I was under the impression that eminent domain referred to Rail Road, county, state and federal roads, water and sewer lines and electric; as these directly benefit everyone. I fail to see how a golf course and recreation center will fulfill the needs of the community in the same way as esential necessities.
Me too...be afraid...be very afraid, of city "planners" and the end of "private property" in their "community" schemes. It's running rampant all over the country.
FMCDH
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