Schoenbrun v. Nettrour

• Decision Date: 08 November 1948
• Docket Number: 1921
• Parties: Schoenbrun et al., Appellants, v. Nettrour et al
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

61 A.2d 868

360 Pa. 474

Schoenbrun et al., Appellants, v. Nettrour et al

No. 1921

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 8, 1948

Argued October 1, 1948

Appeals, Nos. 139 and 140, March T., 1948, from order of Common Pleas, Allegheny Co., April T., 1948, No. 849, in case of Adolph Schoenbrun et al. v. B.W. Nettrour et al. Order affirmed.

Proceeding upon petition and amended petition by plaintiff for declaratory judgment.

Defendants' answers raising questions of law sustained and decree entered dismissing plaintiffs' petitions, before EGAN O'TOOLE and SOFFEL, JJ., opinion by O'TOOLE, J Plaintiffs appealed.

Order affirmed at appellants' costs.

Leonard M. S. Morris, with him Charles H. Sachs and Sachs & Caplan, for appellants.

Maurice Parker and George F. Taylor , with them Alter, Wright & Barron, for appellees.

Before MAXEY, C.J., DREW, LINN, STERN, PATTERSON, STEARNE and JONES JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE JONES

The plaintiffs separately appeal from an order of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County dismissing their petition for a declaratory judgment. In justification of the action so taken, little need be said in addition to what is so well expressed in the opinion for the learned court below.

The petitioners do not aver that they are contending parties to an actual controversy justiciable in a declaratory judgment proceeding; or that there are present antagonistic claims, wherein they have any interest, which presage imminent and inevitable litigation; or that there is any legal right, status or relationship in which they or either of them have any concrete interest, either legal or equitable, in respect of the defendants or any of them. Consequently, the petition fails to supply the requirements of the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act: see Sec. 6 of the Act of June 18, 1923, P.L. 840, as amended by the Act of April 25, 1935, P.L. 72, Sec. 1, and the Act of May 26, 1943, P.L. 645, Sec. 1 (12 PS § 836 Pkt. Supp.); cf. also Moore v. Moore , 344 Pa. 324, 327-328, 25 A.2d 130.

In reality, the plaintiffs seek an advisory opinion concerning the possible liability of the defendant vendors to the defendant real estate agents for a commission on the vendors' sale to the corporate plaintiff of the property described in the written agreement referred to in the petition. Organically, courts are not instituted to render advisory opinions either by way of a declaratory judgment or otherwise: Cryan's Estate, 301 Pa. 386, 390-391, 152 A. 675; see also Reese v. Adamson, 297 Pa. 13, 16-17, 146 A. 262; Pittsburgh's Consolidated City Charter , 297 Pa. 502, 506, 147 A. 525. A petition which seeks merely legal advice, and not the adjudication of an actual controversy, discloses a "state of affairs [that] does not permit of a declaratory judgment": see Sterrett's Estate , 300 Pa. 116, 124, 150 A. 159.

The plaintiffs' interest in the question of the vendors' possible liability to the real estate agents for a commission on the aborted property sale derives from the fact that although the vendors are entitled under the agreement of sale to retain, as liquidated damages for the plaintiffs' breach of the agreement, the hand-money deposited by the plaintiffs, the vendors have expressed a willingness to return the hand-money to the corporate plaintiff (the vendee in the agreement) upon condition that it "obtain and deliver to them [i. e., the vendors] a release from [the real estate agents] of any claim for...