Klehr Harrison Receives Favorable Decision in a Commercial Reassessment Challenge

PHILADELPHIA (July 18, 2019) — Klehr Harrison Harvey Branzburg LLP (Klehr Harrison) is pleased to announce that on July 18, 2019, a team of attorneys that included Glenn Weiner and Larry Arem obtained a fully favorable decision in the matter of Duffield House Associates LP et al. v. City of Philadelphia et al. before Judge Gene D. Cohen, Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.

The case, one of the largest tax assessment challenges in the city’s history, hinged on whether the City of Philadelphia unconstitutionally reassessed commercial properties in 2018 and whether the approximately 700 taxpayers who challenged the City’s reassessments should be refunded as much as $63 million.  Judge Cohen found that the selective reassessment of the plaintiffs’ properties violated the Uniformity Clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution, Pennsylvania statutes and the Philadelphia Code and ordered the defendants to refund to the taxpayers the excess taxes they were assessed, with interest. The refunds are payable by July 2021. 

“We are very pleased with the result for our clients and glad Judge Cohen saw that this was an unconstitutional reassessment,” said Glenn Weiner, a Klehr Harrison Partner, who was one of the attorneys representing the taxpayers in the consolidated cases and delivered part of the closing argument in this trial.  Additional law firms representing the property owners include Blank Rome, Chamberlain Hrdlicka White Williams & Aughtry, Duane Morris, Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippell LLP, Dean E. Weisgold PC, Karalis PC, Fellheimer & Eichen LLP, and Capozzi Adler PC.