One of the legal dilemmas facing Highland Township appears to have been resolved.
On Monday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal filed by a group representing itself as Crystal Spring Ecosystem, along with Highland Township Municipal Authority and Citizens Advocating a Clean Healthy Environment Inc.
The three groups had been seeking to intervene in a now-resolved lawsuit filed by Seneca Resources against Highland Township over the since-repealed Community Bill of Rights. The groups argued before the Third Circuit in March, saying they should have been allowed to intervene in the suit before Seneca and the Highland Township supervisors entered a settlement in which the Community Bill of Rights was repealed, bringing the suit to an end.
The group said that since the supervisors agreed to repeal the bill, they were no longer adequately representing the interests of the people in the township. They alleged in the appeal that the supervisors were not considering “the long-term interests in clean water,” and that they should have been allowed to participate in settlement negotiations, according to the court’s precedent-setting opinion.
The appeals court ruled that because the bill of rights was repealed, and the group’s interest in the case was in defending the bill, the “argument is moot,” the opinion read.
A footnote penned by the judges — Chief Justice D. Brooks Smith, Judge Kent Jordan and Judge Jane Roth — sheds some additional insight into their decision.
“Were we to reach the merits of the issue as to whether appellants could intervene to defend the ordinance, we would have serious doubts that the township of Highland’s decision to seek a settlement made them inadequate representatives of the appellants’ interests,” the footnote read. “We have repeatedly stated that a party is entitled to settle its lawsuit without inviting intervenors where settlement is the only reasonable course of action.”
The judges quote another case, saying that just because the intervenors “would have been less prone to agree to the facts and would have taken a different view of the applicable law does not mean that the (defendants) did not adequately represent their interests in the litigation.” The judges pointed out, too, that in oral arguments, the group’s attorney “essentially conceded that the (bill of rights) was unlawful under existing law.”
The appeals court noted the consent order entered into by the township supervisors does not deprive them of any rights, and therefore, the lower court’s ruling was correct.
There is still an outstanding lawsuit involving Highland Township and Seneca Resources. The suit deals with the township voter-implemented home rule charter, which incorporates many of the portions of the Community Bill of Rights that the supervisors had acknowledged were illegal and unenforceable.
The township was also sued by the Department of Environmental Protection, which challenged the legality of the home rule charter. In April, a Commonwealth Court judge upheld the DEP’s challenge and said the charter was unconstitutional.
