Yingst v. Commonwealth
Yingst v. Commonwealth
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The parties to these eminent domain proceedings, the Commonwealth’s Department of Transportation, on the one hand, and Gerald D. Yingst and Mary M. Yingst, his wife, on the other, have been maneuvering for two years to get positions each believes most conducive to it for favorable resolution of a simple legal issue — that of
Five tracts of land located in Dauphin County were used by Gerald D. Yingst for the conduct of a mobile home sales business. Three were titled to Gerald D. Yingst, one was titled to Gerald D. Yingst and Mary M. Yingst, his wife, and one was leased by Gerald D. Yingst from another. The Commonwealth Department of Transportation in connection with a highway project filed two Declarations of Taking, one for a right-of-way over the tract owned by Gerald D. Yingst and Mary M. Yingst, and the second for fee simple title to two and an easement for right-of-way over one of the three tracts titled to Gerald D. Yingst. In addition, the Commonwealth purchased the tract which Gerald D. Yingst rented and notified him to vacate, with which notice he complied. As to the leased premises, it seems clear that the Commonwealth’s purchase was in lieu of condemnation and that the notice to vacate was given in pursuance of the highway project and that a de facto taking of Yingst’s leasehold interest was thereby effected.
To Dauphin County Docket No. 626, January Term 1975, the Yingsts filed a petition and an amended petition for the appointment of viewers to assess damages for the formal taking of the four tracts owned by the Yingsts and for the assessment of damages for the condemnation of Mr. Yingst’s leasehold interest in the fifth tract. The Commonwealth filed preliminary objections to this petition.
Next, the Yingsts filed a motion for consolidation into a single proceeding of both the Commonwealth’s petition for viewers for the three tracts owned by Mr. Yingst (No. 535 January Term, 1975) and their petition for viewers to assess damages as to all tracts (No. 626 January Term, 1975).
The court below by two orders bearing the same date, (1) sustained the Yingsts’ preliminary objections to the Commonwealth’s petition for the appointment of viewers for the three tracts owned by Mr. Yingst (No. 535 January Term, 1975), and (2) overruled the Common
The Commonwealth thereupon appealed both orders to this Court.
Although the availability of the unity of use rule of Section 605 of the Eminent Domain Code was extensively briefed and presumably argued in the court below, no opinion was written. We have, therefore, no means of knowing whether the lower court concluded that the unity of use provision should apply despite the facts that one of the lots was owned by the Yingsts as tenants by the entireties and the others owned or, in one case, leased by Mr. Yingst alone, or whether the court merely consolidated the claims of Mr. Yingst on the one hand and Mr. and Mrs. Yingst on the other, for hearing by the viewers as separate claims to be assessed separately in a single proceeding. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth contends that the court’s order implies that the unity of use rule is applicable although there are different owners. The Yingsts, on the contrary, state that the orders imply no such decision and that the consolidation effected by the court below was a mere invocation of Section 502(a) (5) of the Eminent Domain Code, 26 P.S. §1-502(a), and our holding In re Condemnation of 2719 East Berkshire Street, 20 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 601, 343 A.2d 67 (1975) that more than one landowner may join in a single petition for appointment of viewers for the assessment of damages to their separate properties arising out of a single act of condemnation. The Yingsts assert, therefore, that the issue of the application of the unity of use rule of Section 605 remains to be decided below. We are unable to make the inference suggested by the Commonwealth. It was clearly within the discretion
We therefore affirm the orders of the court below and remand the record for further proceedings.
. Section 605 reads as follows:
“Where all or a part of several contiguous tracts owned by one owner is condemned or a part of several non-contiguous tracts owned by one owner which are used together for a unified purpose is condemned, damages shall be assessed as if such tracts were one parcel.” (Emphasis supplied.)
. As will he noted later in this opinion, the Yingsts filed an amended petition for appointment of viewers to assess damages to all five tracts alleging that the leased tract had been the subject of a de facto taking. The lower court overruled the Commonwealth’s preliminary objections to this petition — which objections
The Yingsts filed a motion to quash the Commonwealth’s appeals to this court as interlocutory. President Judge Bowman, for this Court, overruled the motion to quash on the authority of Jacobs v. Nether Providence Township, 6 Pa. Commonwealth Ct. 594, 297 A.2d 550 (1972), holding that an order dismissing preliminary objections to a petition for the appointment of viewers asserting a de facto taking is an appealable order.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.