151 Pa. Super. 226 - Seltzer v. Reading’s Empirical Analysis
1942
Citation profile
2 district · 7 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently November 1989
2 district · 7 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Fitzsimmons v. . City of Brooklyn · Commonwealth v. Black · Finley v. McNair · Kane v. Policemen's Relief & Pension Fund · Emery v. Steckel
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 17 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We are not in disagreement with the principle of cases in other States relied on by plaintiff (of which Fitzsimmons v. City of Brooklyn, 102 N. Y. 536 , 7 N.E. 787 is typical) holding that a public officeri unlawfully removed, is entitled to his full salary without deduction of the amount of wages earned in other employment during the period. The relation between a public officer and a municipality is not one of contract. Salary is payable to him not as a contractual obligation but as an incident of his office as long as he holds it. This is the settled law in this State: ‘Services rendered by public officers do not . . . partake of the nature of contracts, nor have the remotest affinity thereto.’ Com. v. Bacon, 6 S. & R. 322; Koontz v. Franklin County, 76 Pa. 154 . “Plaintiff overlooks the fact that as ‘a fire alarm operator,’ he was but an employee, and not an officer of the municipality exercising public functions. Cf. Com. v. Black, 201 Pa. 433 , 50 A. 1008 . His acceptance of appointment to that service, therefore, resulted in a contract of employment, nonetheless so because restricted in its terms by the Act of May 31, 1933, P. L. 1108, placing fire alarm operators under civil service and limiting the right of their removal. And in general, it has always been the law that when a contract of hiring has been violated and one has been unlawfully discharged from employment, his earnings elsewhere during the period are to be set off against his recovery. Emery v. Steckel, 1”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“. . . The appointing authority may suspend any such person without pay pending the determination of the charges against him, but in the event the appointing authority fails to uphold the charges, then the person sought to be suspended or removed shall be reinstated with full pay for the period during which he was suspended.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.