A view of part of the Sunoco Mariner East 2 pipeline project across Trough Creek Valley Road approaching Ellen and Stephen Gerhart's property in Unity Tips, in Huntingdon County. Photo: Associated Press

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has rejected a series of appeals aimed at blocking Sunoco from taking private land for its Mariner East 2 pipeline project.

The high court on Monday denied allocatur in five cases where landowners were challenging the energy giant's ability to use their land for the pipeline project, which is intended to carry thousands of barrels of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex in Delaware County and points in between.

Over the past 18 months, the landowners have seen a handful of unfavorable decisions from the Commonwealth Court, but attorneys for the plaintiffs told The Legal last year that they were hopeful that the appeals before the Supreme Court would keep their challenges alive.

The appeals that the Supreme Court rejected came in the cases involving Patricia and Thomas Perkins, Rolfe and Doris Blume, Homes for America, Stephen and Ellen Gerhart and Charles and Karen Katz.

In July, the Commonwealth Court rejected Glen Mills attorney Charles Katz's challenge to Sunoco's eminent domain action, specifically ruling that the Pennsylvania Utility Commission's determination that a project is for a “public need” does not need to take into account the need to take each specific parcel.

That ruling came little more than a month after the court rejected another challenge to the project, this one brought by the Blumes, who challenged, among other things, the sufficiency of the bond Sunoco posted for the taking.

Less than two weeks before that ruling, the Commonwealth Court rejected another challenge, this time involving arguments about the Supreme Court's latest ruling on Act 13. That challenge was brought by the Gerharts.

Central to many of the challenges was the argument that landowners should be able to challenge on appeal the Pennsylvania Utility Commission's findings underpinning its decision to issue a “certificate of public convenience” for a project. Those considerations include findings about whether a project is a public utility and whether the project is for a public purpose.

However, arguments that courts should be able to review on appeal those foundational findings by the PUC were dismissed by the Commonwealth Court last year in a challenge brought by R. Scott and Pamela Martin.

In that decision, an en banc Commonwealth Court panel determined that the Mariner East 2 pipeline is a public utility service with the ability to condemn property under eminent domain. In December 2016, the Supreme Court denied the appeal in that case, which largely foreclosed arguments related to the overall project.

Three Commonwealth Court judges, however, repeatedly expressed dissent to the Martin decision, which attorneys for the landowners had said was a good sign that the justices might take up their appeals.

Hershey attorney Michael Faherty, who represented both the Martins and the Blumes, had also pointed to the Supreme Court's June 20 ruling in Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation v. Commonwealth as part of his appeal to the justices to take up his clients' cases.

That decision had held that state parks and forests—and the oil and gas minerals underneath—are part of the state's “public trust,” and therefore the state must “conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people” pursuant to Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation ruling is also part of the one challenge that remains pending before the Supreme Court. That case involves the Andover Homeowners' Association, and a petition was filed in November seeking Supreme Court review.

On Tuesday, Katz said he was disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision to reject their appeals.

“I continue to believe that the Commonwealth Court decisions are largely wrong,” he said. “I agree with the dissenting opinions in those cases.”

He added that he would be continuing to support other appeals that are in process in the lower courts.

Both Faherty and Richard Raiders of Lengert & Raiders, who represented the Gerharts, did not return a call for comment.

Sunoco was represented by Robert L. Byer, George Kroculick and Meredith Carpenter of Duane Morris. He referred comment to Sunoco. A spokesman for Sunoco Pipeline L.P. declined to comment.