Citation Numbers: 45 A.2d 868, 355 Pa. 45
Judges: OPINION BY MR. JUSTICE LINN, September 30, 1946:
Filed Date: 3/28/1946
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 1/13/2023
We cannot concur with the majority view that the Act of May 24, 1945, P. L. 944, is a constitutional interference with the jurisdiction and powers of orphans' courts.
Before and since the Constitution of 1873 testators and settlors have granted powers of sale relying upon the heretofore unchallenged power of our orphans' courts to see to it that a fair price for estate assets is realized in the interest of beneficiaries, a class composed largely of widows, minor children and persons unborn. If the Act of 1945 is a valid exercise of legislative power, as the majority holds, then the orphans' courts have been rendered impotent to protect their wards in such cases. Under the Act, any agreement made by an incompetent or inexperienced fiduciary with power of sale will be enforceable against the estate, despite gross inadequacy of consideration, except in *Page 59
the infrequent case where fraud, accident or mistake can be proved. In the present case, where the fiduciary was not acting under a power, application of the Act results in a loss to the beneficiaries of $2,160 and a corresponding gain to the vendee. Had he been acting under a power, the original agreement fixing the purchase price at $25,000 would have bound the estate irrevocably, and the loss to the beneficiaries would have been increased to $5,000. The court would be equally powerless to interfere, in the supposed case of a fiduciary acting under a power, if the original agreement had called for a purchase price of $1,000, with a resulting loss to the estate of $29,000. This Act goes far beyond the suggestion of the concurring Justices in Kane v. Girard Trust Company,
By Art. V, section 1, of the Constitution, the judicial power of the Commonwealth is vested, inter alia, in orphans' courts, and in such other courts as the General Assembly may from time to time establish. Although the courts thus ordained have been, and in the future likely will be, implemented from time to time by the legislature for the purpose of their appropriate efficient and uniform exercise of the judicial power, such courts are, nonetheless, created by and now exist under the Constitution itself. That is necessarily so or otherwise *Page 60
the legislature could divest the courts of all their powers and thereby in effect abolish our judicial system. But, that, the legislature may not do: Commonwealth v. Green,
Of necessity, the legislature has specified and delineated the powers of the courts, including the orphans' courts, and thus has regulated the practice and procedure therein. But the essentials of the constitutionally reposed jurisdiction are fundamental attributes of the courts and beyond the power of the legislature to abridge so long as these constitutional courts are to continue as such. In short, the legislature may deal with the function and powers of the orphans' courts only to the extent necessary to render them adequate for the exercise of the judicial power committed to them by the Constitution. Compare Penn Anthracite Mining Co. v. AnthraciteMiners of Pennsylvania,
As applied to sales under a testamentary power, the Act of 1945 operates to deprive the orphans' courts of a power exercised by them from early Colonial days, *Page 61
viz., the power to control and supervise executors and other testamentary fiduciaries. See Act of March 27, 1713, Law Book A, Vol. 2, p. 73. The power to control presupposes a power to review and set aside: Dundas's Appeal,
If the Act of 1945 were a constitutionally valid exercise of legislative power, we should still be unable to see how a sale by an orphans' court of a decedent's real estate for the payment of his debts could be thought to come within the purview of the Act. Its concern and scope are the conclusiveness and enforceability of fiduciaries' contracts; and no such contract is here involved. The court flatly rejected the only fiduciary contract ever introduced in this proceeding. Nor does it help any to fictionize by saying that the court's acceptance of a higher bid and its direction to the fiduciary to make a deed for the property to the bidder was tantamount to the court's approval of a new contract by the fiduciary. The sale of a decedent's real estate for the payment of his debts has long lain peculiarly and exclusively within *Page 62
the jurisdiction and power of an orphans' court: See Act of March 10, 1688, Duke of Yorke's Book of Laws, p. 180. Even though an exercise of such jurisdiction be invoked on the basis of an antecedent agreement between a fiduciary and a prospective purchaser, action thereafter taken by the court in pursuance of the agreement is "not a sale on the contract but one under the authority of law": Powers Estate,
The law as above stated appears to have been the rule uniformly followed by the courts of this State at least since the decision in Demmy's Appeal, supra, in 1862; and the rule there enunciated was but an interpretation of the statutory definition of the orphans' court powers in such regard under Sec. 19, cl. IV, of the Act of June 16, 1836, which was carried into the Orphans' Court Act of 1917 as Sec. 9, cl. (f). Consequently, when the Act of 1945 is construed so as to embrace a fiduciary's contract for a private sale of a decedent's real estate for the payment of his debts, yet necessarily subject to due proceedings in an orphans' court, then the Act is additionally unconstitutional in that it works an amendment of extant orphans' court statute law without so fore. casting in its title and without specifying the amendment in its body as required, respectively, by Art. III, sections 3 and 6, of the Constitution.
The Act of 1945 further violates the same constitutional provisions last above cited. The law with respect to the power of the orphans' courts over fiduciaries even to the extent of reviewing, setting aside and, if necessary, ordering a resale "of real estate made under a testamentary power" (Dundas'sAppeal, supra, p. 331) was likewise an interpretation of the statutory definition of *Page 63
the orphans' court powers in such regard as contained in section 19 of the Act of June 16, 1836, which section 9 of the Orphans' Court Act of 1917 carried forward. The statutory provision as interpreted in Dundas's Appeal, supra, became firmly established in our law by later decisions of this Court:Orr's Estate, supra; McCullough's Estate,
The majority opinion holds that the authorities show the Act of 1945 is not in conflict with Article V, section 1, citing four decisions. But not one of these cases involved an Act comparable in terms or effect with the legislation now before us. The basic principle of the decisions referred to is that the Constitution having granted to the legislature, by section 1 of Article V, the power to create from time to time courts other than those enumerated, nothing contained in the subsequent sections of that article is sufficient to deprive the legislature of the power to create courts of a different class or grade, and to transfer to the courts so created some of the jurisdiction of the courts enumerated, or vest in them a limited concurrent jurisdiction: Gerlach v. Moore,
For the reasons stated, we would declare the Act of 1945 unconstitutional and affirm the decree of the court below. *Page 64