HARRISBURG – In a 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has concurred with a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation appeal looking to reverse a decision from the Commonwealth Court – which had found an unmined coal estate adjacent to highway construction was illegally seized by state transport authorities through eminent domain.
The Commonwealth Court decided in March 2019 that a de facto taking of land on which the coal estate was located had occurred, when PennDOT undertook construction of Highway 219 in southern Somerset County in 2010, to the detriment of Penn Pocahontas Coal Co. and PBS Coals, Inc.
The Commonwealth Court ruled that options to determine right-of-way access to the coal estate in question’s surface, located on Parcel 55, were eliminated through the highway construction. Parcel 55, located in Brothersvalley, was owned by Penn Pocahontas and leased to PBS Coals.
“In reaching that conclusion, the Commonwealth Court held that the feasibility of mining the coal, as measured by the probability of obtaining a legally required permit from the Department of Environmental Protection, was relevant only to damages,” Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Justice Christine Donohue said.
“We reversed the Commonwealth Court’s decision, as we agree with PennDOT that the legality of extracting the coal went directly to the trial court’s duty to determine whether a taking occurred.”
Donohue added that the coal companies presented insufficient evidence to demonstrate that they possessed any “beneficial use and enjoyment of the property”.
In Donohue’s view, also representing the majority of the state Supreme Court, the coal companies “cannot use and enjoy their coal estate because there is no mining operation on the Parcel 55 property, and they did not meet their heavy evidentiary burden to establish any likelihood that they will be able to obtain a surface mining permit to begin a mining operation to extract the coal.”
For this reason, the state Supreme Court believes the Commonwealth Court ruled in error, when it did not remand the case to the Somerset County Court of Common Pleas for further proceedings.
“We further find that the Commonwealth Court erred by failing to remand the case for consideration of whether consequential damages are available to the coal companies. We therefore reverse and remand to the Commonwealth Court, with instructions to remand to the trial court, [as] to the coal companies’ consequential damages claim,” Donohue concluded.
Justices Thomas G. Saylor, Max Baer, Debra Todd, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht joined the majority opinion, while Justice Sallie Updyke Mundy dissented from it.
“In my view, the coal companies met their burden of establishing a prima facie case that PennDOT committed a de facto taking of Parcel 55’s coal estate, for which the coal companies were likely to obtain a permit, and PennDOT did not rebut this evidence,” Mundy said.
“Further, the trial court’s conclusion that the coal companies’ ability to obtain a surface mining permit was speculative and uncertain is not supported by substantial evidence of record.”
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania case 41 WAP 2019
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com