taxpayers have no standing to appeal an order denying a petition to empanel an investigating grand jury
How later courts described this case
- taxpayers have no standing to appeal an order denying a petition to empanel an investigating grand jury
- appendix attached to concurring opinion listing Pennsylvania grand jury cases
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Benjamin R. Jones :
On occasion a judge encounters a situation wherein he must yield his belief and opinion on the merits Of a controversy in deference to a long settled and well established rule of procedure, a rule to which adherence is requisite if the administration of justice is to be orderly and certain. The case at bar presents such a situation.
A careful scrutiny of the instant record convinces me that the court below should have directed an investigation by a grand jury of the matters set forth in the petition presented to it. Had I been a member of the court below to which this- petition was presented, *369 without hesitation I would have granted the prayer of the petition and directed a grand jury investigation. Thus, in many respects, I am in full accord with the views expressed and the conclusions reached in the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Bell.
However, I believe that, under our decisions and well established practice, the present appellants lack the requisite legal standing to take this appeal. The right of appeal is not universal but confined to parties who are “aggrieved” in the legal sense by an order, decree or judgment of a lower court. Such has been the rationale of our decisions over the years. In my opinion, the present appellants are not “parties aggrieved” in the legal sense and, hence, had no right of appeal. It is, therefore, with reluctance that I conclude that this appeal must be quashed.