Pennsylvania Superior Court has issued two forceful slaps, one to an Allegheny County judge and another to the Allegheny County Airport Authority.
The former is so serious that the judge’s legal acumen should be reviewed. The latter is so serious that the appropriate controlling legal authority should begin an investigation of all Airport Authority practices.
The case before the appeals court was the Airport Authority’s stormtrooper-like eviction last spring of the longtime operator of the mall at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT).
The Airport Authority claimed that, among other things, Fraport, the company that had operated the mall (under a few different iterations) for more than three decades, endangered security at the Findlay Township facility through the “careless mishandling of knives and other prohibited items on multiple occasions that were found unguarded in the terminal beyond the TSA security checkpoint.”
Then, on June 15, the Airport Authority voided its lease and used Allegheny County Police to forcibly evict Fraport employees from PIT. It then took over operations of the mall.
Fraport denied any operational or agreement lapses and sought a preliminary injunction in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court to stay the eviction. That was denied by Judge Christine Ward in August. Fraport appealed the ruling.
And in a scathing reversal, a three-judge Superior Court panel pummeled Ward for myriad legal errors. The main one was rationalizing that Fraport’s deal with the Airport Authority was a “service contract” and not a lease.
Superior Court remanded the case to Ward to issue the preliminary injunction that would restore Fraport operational rights a PIT’s mall pending the case’s disposition. The Airport Authority says it will immediately appeal the ruling.
But the Superior Court tribunal reserved its harshest assessment for the Airport Authority.
The appeals court says the Airport Authority violated the Landlord Tenant Act of 1951 and Fraport’s master lease with the authority.
“In this case, [the Airport Authority] employed self-help by using Allegheny County Police, who are at the airport to protect the public safety, to advance instead its commercial interests to forcibly remove Fraport personnel from the property,” the court found.
“By doing so, the [authority’s] actions were contrary to both the Landlord Tenant Act as well as the terms of the master lease limiting its remedies to only those available in law and equity, and constituted irreparable injury as a matter of law. [The Airport Authority’s] conduct was a seizure of Fraport’s real and personal property, including the leases it had with its subtenants.”
Allow us to translate:
The Allegheny County Airport Authority ran roughshod over not only Fraport but the rule of law.
This case, of course, is far from over. But it does open a window on the world of how a public authority that too often acts as a self-dealing syndicate of organized cabalists operates. And it’s not flattering.
The question now writ large becomes whether the Allegheny County Airport Authority is serving the public, as it so adamantly claims, or itself, which reasonable people might conclude.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
