Commonwealth v. Trautner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The landowner is still not free to use his land until such time as another party, over whom he has absolutely no control, acts in a manner satisfactory to DER. There is no guarantee that such action will occur within a reasonable time, or for that matter, ever occur. “Even if municipal officials failed to comply with an order directing them to revise their official plan and were fined or eventually found in contempt, the property owner would still not have DER approval for his project. Likewise, a municipality may refuse to revise its plan to include an on-lot system because of plans for a community sewage system to be constructed some time in the distant future. The property owner can be effectively denied the use of his land while a plan, which is to be implemented at some indefinite time, if at all, is managed by local officials. “We have carefully examined the record and the regulatory scheme involved in this case and we conclude that, as applied to Trautner’s circumstances, the regulations noted above constitute an unreasonable restriction on the use of his land and are, in effect, a confiscation without due process of law. By sustaining DER’s appeal we would be enforcing these regulations in derrogation [sic] of Trautner’s constitutional rights, and this we cannot do.” [at 122-23]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Borough of Sayre v. Department of Environmental Resources