Com. v. Parker White Metal Co.
| Decision Date | 09 October 1986 |
| Citation | 512 Pa. 74,515 A.2d 1358 |
| Parties | , 25 ERC 1173, 17 Envtl. L. Rep. 20,352 COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. PARKER WHITE METAL CO., Appellee. COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. PENN IRON & METAL COMPANY, INC., Appellee. COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. LIMCO, d/b/a Liberty Iron and Metal Co., Appellee. COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellant, v. Albert E. FUCHS, Appellee. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
John Wolford, Erie, for Parker-White Metal Co.
Dennis G. Kuftic, Edinboro, for Albert Fuchs.
Frank L. Kroto, Michael S. Jan Janin, Erie, for Liberty Iron & Metal Co.
Joseph J. D'Alba, Philip B. Friedman, Erie, for Penn Iron & Metal Co.
Before NIX, C.J., and LARSEN, FLAHERTY, McDERMOTT, HUTCHINSON, ZAPPALA, and PAPADAKOS, JJ.
In this appeal, appellees have challenged the constitutionality of certain enforcement/penalty provisions of the Solid Waste Management Act (the Act), Act of July 7, 1980, P.L.380, No. 97 §§ 101-1003, 35 P.S. §§ 6018.101--6018.1003 (Purdon's Supp.1986). Specifically, appellees challenge sections 606(a) and 606(b) of the Act, which provide:
(a) Any person, other than a municipal official exercising his official duties, or any municipality who violates any provision of this act, the rules and regulations of the department, or any order of the department, or any term or condition of any permit upon conviction in a summary proceeding, shall be sentenced to pay a fine of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000 and costs and, in default of the payment of such fines and costs, to undergo imprisonment for not more than 30 days.
(b) Any person other than a municipal official exercising his official duties who violates any provision of this act, any rule or regulation of the department, any order of the department, or any term or condition of any permit, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the third degree and, upon conviction, shall be sentenced to pay a fine of not less than $1,000 but not more than $25,000 per day for each violation or to imprisonment for a period of not more than one year, or both.
Appellees assert that, because these two provisions "proscribe identical conduct yet provide for vastly different penalties" without guidelines for the prosecutors and agencies charged with enforcing the Act as to when to seek either a summary offense conviction or a misdemeanor of the third degree conviction, the Act creates arbitrary classifications, and "vests unfettered discretion in the prosecutor," and violates, therefore, the state and federal constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process of law and proscriptions against delegation of legislative power to the executive branch of government. We reject these challenges and uphold the constitutionality of the Act.
Following an investigation by the January 25, 1982 multi-county investigating grand-jury convened upon the application of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth, appellees were all charged in Erie County with misdemeanors of the third degree under section 606(b), 35 P.S. § 6018.606(b), for violations of the Solid Waste Management Act. 1
Appellee Albert E. Fuchs was charged with 9 counts of dumping or permitting the dumping of hazardous wastes on the Albert Fuchs Foundry Sand site in Erie County during the period of September, 1980 through April, 1981 without a permit and contrary to the rules and regulations of the Department of Environmental Resources (DER) in violation of section 401(a), 35 P.S. § 6018.401(a), management of hazardous waste. 2 Originally charged with felonies for these violations under section 606(f), 3 appellee Fuchs' charges were reduced to misdemeanors of the third degree under section 606(b) following a preliminary hearing before a District Justice.
The remaining appellees, Parker White Metal Co., Penn Iron & Metal Co., Inc. and Limco, doing business as Liberty Iron and Metal Co., were charged with misdemeanors of the third degree under section 606(b) for illegally transporting solid wastes to a facility (the Fuchs site) that had not obtained a permit from DER, and for dumping solid "residual" and/or "hazardous" wastes without a permit from DER for such dumping, in violation of sections 610(6) and (1) of the Act, 35 P.S. § 6018.610(6) and (1). 4
Omnibus pre-trial motions were filed on behalf of all appellees which, inter alia, challenged the constitutionality of the Act. The Court of Common Pleas of Erie County granted all the appellees' pre-trial motions to dismiss the charges, finding that the challenged provisions of the Act violated Article I, section 26 and Article II, section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. That court reasoned:
Since "any violation" under Sections 606(a) and 606(b) is both a summary offense and a misdemeanor of the third degree, the prosecutor is not limited in choosing whether to seek different degrees of punishment for the same acts committed under identical circumstances by similarly situated defendants, and, therefore, the penalty provisions permit discrimination between individuals without a reason legitimately and reasonably related to individual situations. (citation omitted).
This type of discrimination violates Article 1, § 26 of the Pennsylvania Constitution which forbids discrimination against any person and does not limit impermissible discrimination to that usually characterized as invidious and based on, for example, race or religion. (citation omitted).
Sections 606(a) and 606(b) also violate Article 2, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution in that the choice of a summary offense or of a misdemeanor and the penalties to be imposed are left to prosecutorial choice, which is unlimited. The Constitution provides that the legislature shall enact laws and define what constitutes a crime and shall also set the penalty for any violation of that crime. In instant case this is left to the prosecutor and violates the Constitution, since the legislature cannot delegate its authority to define a crime and/or to set the penalty for the crime.
Opinion of the Court of Common Pleas of Erie County granting appellees' motion to dismiss charges, August 29, 1984 at 4-5. The Attorney General, for the Commonwealth has appealed from that court's determination and order. 5
There is, of course, a strong and fundamental presumption that the legislature has acted within constitutional bounds. Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer, 500 Pa. 16, 58-60, 454 A.2d 937, 959 (1983), cert. denied 461 U.S. 970, 103 S.Ct. 2444, 77 L.Ed.2d 1327 (1983); American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Scheiner, 510 Pa. 430, 509 A.2d 838, 849 (1986); Commonwealth v. Mikulan, 504 Pa. 244, 247, 470 A.2d 1339, 1340 (1983). Consequently, one challenging the constitutionality of a legislative enactment bears the heavy burden of demonstrating that it clearly, plainly and palpably violates some specific mandate or prohibition of the constitution. Id. Snider v. Thornburgh, 496 Pa. 159, 166, 436 A.2d 593, 596 (1981).
In considering the constitutionality of the Solid Waste Management Act, we must also bear in mind that it was enacted to implement the will of the people as expressed in Article I, section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which provides:
Natural resources and the public estate
The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.
Adopted May 18, 1971.
See section 102(10) of the Act, 35 P.S. § 6018.102(10) ().
With these general standards to guide us and keenly aware of our role as one of the trustees of the public estate, we turn to appellees' specific constitutional challenges.
Appellees argue that sections 606(a) and 606(b) of the Act impose "different degrees of punishment for identical statutory violations," and so create arbitrary and unreasonable classifications between similarly situated persons without rational basis. Brief for Appellees at 9-10. This argument is based upon the guarantee of equal protection of the laws of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution 6 and upon Article I, section 26 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. 7
This Court is, of course, at liberty to "interpret our Constitution in a more generous manner than the federal courts" have interpreted the Constitution of the United States, and we have done so in the past. Fischer v. Department of Public Welfare (DPW), 509 Pa. 293, 305, 502 A.2d 114 (1985) and cases cited therein. In the equal protection area, however, we have chosen to be guided by the standards and analysis employed by the United States Supreme Court and have adopted those standards and analysis in interpreting and applying Article I, section 26 of our Constitution . 8 Fischer v. DPW, supra at 310, 502 A.2d at 123-124; James v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), 505 Pa. 137, 144-45, 477 A.2d 1302, 1305 (1984); Astemborski v. Susmarski, 502 Pa. 409, 412, 466 A.2d 1018 (1983).
The equal protection analytical framework was described by this Court in James v. SEPTA, supra, wherein we stated:
[T]here are three different types of classifications calling for three different standards of judicial review. The first type--classifications implicating neither suspect classes nor fundamental rights--will be sustained if it meets a "rational basis" test.... In the second type of cases, where a suspect classification has been made or a...
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