J-S33002-21

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

LORI A. DIBBLE AND THERESA ODDO 

Appellants

v.

PAGE TRANSPORTATION, INC., PAGE 

E.T.C., INC., AMS TRUCKING, LLC, 

AND UPPER CANADA STONE 

COMPANY, LTD

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 IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF

 PENNSYLVANIA

 No. 565 EDA 2021

Appeal from the Order Entered February 10, 2021

In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County Civil Division at 

No(s): No. 200900060

BEFORE: BOWES, J., NICHOLS, J., and McLAUGHLIN, J.

MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED NOVEMBER 19, 2021

Lori A. Dibble and Theresa Oddo (collectively “Plaintiffs”) appeal from 

the order that sustained the preliminary objections of Page Transportation, 

Inc., Page E.T.C., Inc., and AMS Trucking, LLC (collectively “Defendants”) 

claiming venue was improper in Philadelphia County and transferring the 

action to Dauphin County.1 We affirm.

The trial court supplied the following summary of the history of this 

case:

This matter arises out of a September 10, 2018 motor 

vehicle accident on Interstate 90 at milepost marker 410 in the 

Town of Clarence, New York. The motor vehicle accident in the 

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1 Named defendant Upper Canada Stone Company, LTD, was dismissed from 

the action upon stipulation of the parties. 
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instant matter involved the Plaintiffs and Matthew Russel Swope, 

an individual who resides in Flinton, PA.1 Mr. Swope was the 

operator of a commercial semi-tractor with an attached 

commercial trailer owned by AMS Trucking, LLC. Mr. Swope is 

also the sole owner and only employee of AMS Trucking, LLC. The 

accident occurred when Mr. Swope allegedly attempted to merge 

from the right lane into the left lane and swiped the Plaintiffs’

vehicle causing Plaintiff[s] to strike the embankment alongside 

the right shoulder. 

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1 Flinton, PA is located in Cambria County.

The plaintiffs in this matter are Lori Dibble, the driver of the 

vehicle, and Theresa Oddo, a passenger in the vehicle, who reside 

in Batavia, NY and Corfu, NY, respectively. . . . The defendants in 

this matter are Page Transportation, Inc. and Page E.T.C., Inc., 

(collectively, hereinafter “Page Defendants”), both of which are 

New York corporations with registered business offices in 

Harrisburg, PA5; and AMS Trucking, LLC, (hereinafter AMS), a 

Pennsylvania corporation with a registered business address in 

Flinton, PA. The Page Defendants’ business, as trucking 

companies, consists solely of “hauling loads.” At the time of the 

accident, AMS was leased to haul loads for the Page Defendants. 

Mr. Swope, through AMS, was carrying a load for Page 

Transportation from Northern Canada to Pottstown, 

Pennsylvania.6

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5 Harrisburg, PA is located in Dauphin County.

6 Pottstown, PA is located in Montgomery County.

Plaintiffs filed a complaint in the instant matter in the Court 

of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County on September 8, 2020. 

The Defendants filed preliminary objections to Plaintiffs’ complaint 

on October 13, 2020. The Plaintiffs filed an answer to 

Defendants[’] preliminary objections on November 2, 2020. Th[e 

trial] court issued a rule to show cause allowing all parties to 

submit supplemental briefing as to the issue of venue on 

November 6, 2020. Both Plaintiffs and Defendants filed 

supplemental briefing on December 28, 2020. Th[e trial] court 

issued an order on February 10, 2021 sustaining the preliminary 

objections and transferring the instant matter to the Court of 

Common Pleas, Dauphin County.
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Trial Court Opinion, 5/19/21, at 1-3 (citations, unnecessary capitalization, 

ordinal indicators, and some footnotes omitted).

Plaintiffs filed a timely notice of appeal. The trial court ordered Plaintiffs 

to file a concise statement of errors complained of on appeal pursuant to 

Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b), and Plaintiffs filed a timely statement. Thereafter, the trial 

court authored a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a) opinion. Accordingly, the appeal is ripe 

for our disposition. 

Plaintiffs present the following question for our consideration: “Whether 

the trial court erred when it sustained [Defendants’] preliminary objection with 

respect to improper venue?” Plaintiffs’ brief at 9. In particular, Plaintiffs 

contend that (1) the evidence of record, specifically the Page Defendants’

admitted contacts with Philadelphia County, was sufficient to establish proper 

venue in that county; and (2) Plaintiffs did not have “a fair opportunity to 

access” all pertinent documents, including reports of a search of the origin and 

destination of loads (“TMS reports”), bills of lading, E-Z Pass logs, fuel 

receipts, and maintenance records requested in discovery. See id. at 15-17.

We first address Defendants’ claim that Plaintiffs waived their appellate 

issues by filing a deficient Rule 1925(b) statement. The issue stated in 

Plaintiffs’ Rule 1925(b) statement was “The Honorable Trial Court erred as a 

matter of law, and thereby abused its discretion, in holding that Philadelphia 

County is an improper venue to the instant matter where Defendants have 

admitted to conducting business in Philadelphia County.” Plaintiffs’ Concise 
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Statement, 3/31/21, at 2. Defendants assert that this statement is too vague 

to have put the trial court on notice of the errors alleged. See Defendants’

brief at 25-29. Defendants argue that the specific challenges Plaintiffs 

advance on appeal, namely the adequacy of the Philadelphia County contacts 

of record and Defendants’ failure to respond to discovery, are not sufficiently 

suggested by their Rule 1925(b) statement to have put the trial court on notice 

of the appellate issues. Id. at 27-28. 

“The function of the concise statement is to clarify for the judge who 

issued the order the grounds on which the aggrieved party seeks appellate 

review – so as to facilitate the writing of the opinion.” Commonwealth v. 

Rogers, 250 A.3d 1209, 1224 (Pa. 2021). Where the statement does not 

provide the trial court with sufficient notice of the alleged error, waiver results. 

See, e.g., Lineberger v. Wyeth, 894 A.2d 141, 148–49 (Pa.Super. 2006) 

(finding waiver where the concise statement vaguely alleged that the trial 

court erred in granting a motion for summary judgment). 

Here, Plaintiffs’ statement clearly notified the trial judge that they 

believed that the evidence of record concerning Defendants’ contacts with 

Philadelphia County warranted overruling the preliminary objection to venue, 

and the trial court addressed that claim in its opinion. However, nothing in 

Plaintiffs’ statement alerted the trial court that they were further complaining 

that Defendants did not supply requested evidence. Understandably, the trial 

court did not address outstanding discovery in its opinion. Accordingly, we 
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find that Plaintiffs waived their discovery-based argument by failing to include 

in in their Rule 1925(b) statement. See, e.g., Grabowski v. Carelink Cmty. 

Support Servs., Inc., 230 A.3d 465, 476 (Pa.Super. 2020) (holding issue not 

included in Rule 1925(b) statement was waived on appeal). However, we 

shall proceed to address Plaintiffs’ preserved contention that the evidence 

which was produced by Defendants did not support the trial court’s ruling. 

We begin with a review of the pertinent legal principles. Venue is 

governed by Pa.R.C.P. 1006, which provides:

Improper venue shall be raised by preliminary objection and if not 

so raised shall be waived. If a preliminary objection to venue is 

sustained and there is a county of proper venue within the State 

the action shall not be dismissed but shall be transferred to the 

appropriate court of that county.

Pa.R.C.P. 1006(e). Rule 1006 further specifies that actions against

“corporations and similar entities” may be brought only in the counties 

designated by Pa.R.C.P. 2179.2 See Pa.R.C.P. 1006(b). Rule 2179 identifies 

the counties in which venue against a corporation lies as follows:

(1) the county where its registered office or principal place of 

business is located;

(2) a county where it regularly conducts business;

(3) the county where the cause of action arose;

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2 With exceptions not pertinent here, where joint and severable liability is 

sought against two or more defendants, as is the case in the instant action, 

the action “may be brought against all defendants in any county in which the 

venue may be laid against any one of the defendants[.]” Pa.R.C.P. 

1006(c)(1). 
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(4) a county where a transaction or occurrence took place out of 

which the cause of action arose, or

(5) a county where the property or a part of the property which is 

the subject matter of the action is located provided that equitable 

relief is sought with respect to the property.

Pa.R.C.P. 2179(a). Plaintiffs’ assertion of proper venue in the instant action 

is based solely upon the contention that the Page Defendants regularly 

conducted business in Philadelphia County. 

Plaintiffs contend that we apply a de novo, plenary standard of review 

of the trial court’s decision to sustain Defendants’ preliminary objections

alleging improper venue. See Plaintiffs’ brief at 8 (citing, inter alia, Trexler 

v. McDonald’s Corp., 118 A.3d 408, 412 (Pa.Super. 2015)). While that 

standard is generally applicable to appeals concerning preliminary objections, 

our Supreme Court has stated a different standard for review of a trial court’s 

Rule 2179(a)(2) determination. Specifically, the High Court long ago specified 

that an appellate court may not overturn a trial court’s determination whether 

a corporation regularly conducted business in a given county if “such 

conclusion is a reasonable one in view of the facts.” Monaco v. Montgomery 

Cab Co., 208 A.2d 252, 256 (Pa. 1965). As such, “[w]e review an order 

granting or denying preliminary objections asserting improper venue for abuse 

of discretion.” Hangey v. Husqvarna Prof’l Products, Inc., 247 A.3d 1136, 

1140 (Pa.Super. 2021) (en banc). Accordingly, we apply the more deferential 

abuse-of-discretion standard in reviewing the trial court’s application of the 

above-refenced law to the facts of the instant case.
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This Court recently conducted an examination of what type of evidence 

establishes that “acts are being ‘regularly’ performed within the context of the 

particular business.” Hangey, supra at 1141 (cleaned up). We observed 

that “in the venue context, ‘regularly’ does not mean ‘principally,’ and a 

defendant may perform acts ‘regularly’ even though these acts make up a 

small part of its total activities.” Id. (cleaned up). We further explained: 

In determining whether venue is proper under this rule, 

courts employ a quality-quantity analysis. The term “quality of 

acts” means those directly furthering, or essential to, corporate 

objects; they do not include incidental acts. To satisfy the 

quantity prong of this analysis, acts must be sufficiently 

continuous so as to be considered habitual.

Id. (cleaned up).

The trial court summarized the evidence of Defendants’ contacts with 

Philadelphia County and its legal conclusions as to the import of that evidence 

as follows:

The undisputed facts are, since the inception of AMS in 

2006, AMS has never conducted any business in Philadelphia 

County. AMS has a registered business office in Flinton, PA[, its 

only office]. Matthew Swope, the sole owner and employee of the 

company, testified at a deposition that “AMS Trucking has never 

traveled in or out of the Philadelphia area for any loads 

whatsoever.” The majority of AMS’[s] loads originate in Western 

Pennsylvania, Allentown, PA, and Maryland. Not only does AMS 

not have any business in Philadelphia County, AMS’[s] drivers 

“never” travel through Philadelphia with their loads. Furthermore, 

for a two year period, approximately spanning from the beginning 

of 2016 until November of 2018, AMS was leased to the Page 

Defendants to haul trucking loads. AMS never had a customer in 

Philadelphia County for either the Page Defendants or themselves. 

Since AMS has never conducted any business in Philadelphia 

County, venue as to AMS is improper.
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The Page Defendants, upon the filing of their Preliminary 

Objections in the instant matter, attached an affidavit of 

Christopher Jorolemon. Mr. Jorolemon has worked for Page

Transportation since 1999 and has been the Vice President of 

Operations since 2006. In Mr. Jorolemon’s affidavit dated October 

6, 2020, Mr. Jorolemon asserted the Page Defendants do not

currently have offices, own property, lease property or store 

equipment in Philadelphia County. Furthermore, the Page 

Defendants have never had offices, equipment or employees 

located in Philadelphia County. From approximately 2015 through 

2020, Mr. Jorolemon asserted less than one-half of a percent of 

the Page Defendants’ loads either originated from or were 

delivered to Philadelphia County. 

Mr. Jorolemon was deposed following th[e trial] court’s rule 

permitting supplemental briefing on the sole issue of venue. 

During his deposition, Mr. Jorolemon testified that the figures used 

in the original affidavit’s “one-half of one percent” figure was an 

estimate using his “understanding of our business and where we 

conducted business.” Mr. Jorolemon provided a supplemental 

affidavit and further testified to undertaking a search using the 

Page Defendants’ TMS system to determine the exact extent of 

their business in Philadelphia County.

From January 1, 2016 until December 2, 2020, the Page 

Defendants had eighty-six (86) loads that were delivered into 

Philadelphia County, delivered out of Philadelphia County or had 

a billing address in Philadelphia County regardless of where the 

delivery either began or ended. In that same period of time, the 

Page Defendants were responsible for five hundred twelve 

thousand three hundred eighty-four loads (512,384). Therefore, 

only .0167% of the Page Defendants[’] loads had any connection 

to Philadelphia County. The 86 loads with a connection to 

Philadelphia County derived from ten (10) customers. In order 

for venue to be proper in a given county, a business organization 

has to “regularly conduct business.” Using the [pertinent test], 

Plaintiffs have failed to prove the Page Defendants have either the 

requisite quantity or quality of business to be considered regular. 

The hauling of 86 loads over the course of five years is far more 

incidental than essential to the totality of the Page Defendants’

business.

As previously stated, the Page Defendants are New York 

corporations with a registered office in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 
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The Page Defendants do not have any physical locations in

Philadelphia County. The only “physical location” the Page 

Defendants own in Pennsylvania is a “dispatch office” in Beaver 

County. Furthermore, the underlying accident in this matter 

happened in Clarence, New York. At the time of the accident, 

neither the Plaintiffs nor any of the Defendants were driving to or 

from Philadelphia County. The Plaintiffs reside in Batavia, New 

York and Corfu, New York, respectively. The Plaintiffs received no

medical treatment in Philadelphia County. The Plaintiffs do not 

work in Philadelphia County. Plaintiffs do not own, lease, or rent 

any property in Philadelphia County. The Plaintiffs do not have 

any immediate relatives who live in Philadelphia County. The only 

connection any party in the instant matter has to Philadelphia 

County is the infinitesimal percentage, .0167%, of loads that 

either were delivered, originated or billed to an address in 

Philadelphia County by the Page Defendants in the past five years.

Trial Court Opinion, 5/19/21, at 5-8 (citations, footnotes, and unnecessary 

capitalization omitted).

Examination of our decision in Hangey, which involved the same trial 

court and similar evidence, is helpful to our review of the trial court’s 

determination in the case sub judice. In Hangey, the plaintiffs sued a number 

of defendants in Philadelphia County alleging liability for a personal injury 

suffered in 2016 in connection with a lawn mower purchased and used in 

Bucks County. The only basis for venue in Philadelphia County was that the 

defendant HPP regularly conducted business there pursuant to Rule Pa.R.C.P. 

2179(a). Discovery revealed that HPP “had approximately $1.4 billion in sales 

revenue in the United States, of which $75,310.00 came from direct sales in 

Philadelphia County.” Hangey, supra at 1139 (cleaned up).

Of the $75,000 in sales made in Philadelphia in 2016, roughly 

$69,700 came from a single [HPP] authorized dealer, DL 

Electronics, Inc. Approximately 0.005% of HPP’s 2016 United 
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States sales revenue resulted from direct sales in Philadelphia 

County. Sales data from 2014 and 2015 is substantially similar, 

with approximately 0.005% of [HPP]’s annual United States sale 

revenue resulting from direct sales within Philadelphia County.

Id. (cleaned up). The trial court held that venue was improper because, 

although HPP’s contacts with Philadelphia County were of sufficient quality, 

they did not satisfy the quantity prong of the test. “The court reasoned that 

only 0.005% of HPP’s national revenue came from sales in Philadelphia and 

concluded that because this amount was ‘de minimis,’ HPP’s contact with 

Philadelphia was not general and habitual.” Id. at 1140. 

In considering the challenge to the trial court’s decision, we examined 

the significance of the percentage of a company’s business conducted in the 

county at issue. Specifically, we explained:

The percentage of a company’s overall business that it conducts 

in a given county, standing alone, is not meaningful and is not 

determinative of the “quantity” prong. Each case turns on its own 

facts, and we must evaluate evidence of the extent of a 

defendant’s business against the nature of the business at issue. 

A small or local business may do all of its work in just a few 

counties or even a single one, while a large business may span 

the entire nation. Indeed, the percentage of sales a multi-billiondollar company makes in a particular county will almost always be 

a tiny percentage of its total sales. Courts thus should not 

consider percentages in isolation. Rather, courts must consider 

all of the evidence in context to determine whether the 

defendant’s business activities in the county were regular, 

continuous, and habitual.

Id. at 1142.

Applying that standard to the facts before it, this Court reversed. We 

held that “the trial court erred in relying almost exclusively on evidence of the 
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percentage of defendant’s business that occurred in Philadelphia when 

addressing the quantity prong” of the regularly-conducts-business analysis. 

Id. at 1143. We further ruled that HPP’s “contacts with Philadelphia—

including having an authorized dealer in Philadelphia, and selling $75,310 

worth of products through that dealer in 2016 in Philadelphia—were 

‘sufficiently continuous so as to be considered habitual.’” Id. 

In the instant appeal, Plaintiffs assert that the trial court again erred in 

relying solely on the percentage of the Page Defendants’ overall loads that 

were connected to Philadelphia County. Plaintiffs contend that the amount of 

business conducted in Philadelphia County was “enough to make venue 

appropriate.” Plaintiffs’ brief at 21. Plaintiffs argue that this Court has decided 

that relevant contacts constituting a small percentage of sales is determinative 

only where the defendants were small or local companies. Id. at 21-22. By 

contrast:

By Mr. Jorolemon’s own admission, the Page [Defendants] are a 

multinational company operating in both the United States and 

Canada. According to Mr. Jorolemon, the company has dispatch 

offices in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, 

Kansas, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. While [Defendants]

contend that 0.0167% of its loads had a connection to Philadelphia 

County, [they] wholly fail to quantify the actual business they 

conduct within Philadelphia. Mr. Jorolemon testified that the Page 

[Defendants] had ten customers in Philadelphia County from 

2016-2020, and multiple loads had been delivered to some of the 

customers throughout the five-year period. Conveniently, Mr. 

Jorolemon was unable to confirm the number and frequency of 

repeat customers requiring multiple loads to be delivered to 

Philadelphia. Moreover, it is strange that the Page [Defendants]

have offices located in New Jersey, less than sixty miles from 

Philadelphia, yet contend that they do not have the requisite
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contact with Philadelphia for venue purposes. As such, because 

[the Page Defendants] have the requisite contact with Philadelphia 

County, the trial court erred in sustaining their Preliminary 

Objection.

Id. at 22-23 (citations omitted).

At first blush, it appears that there may be merit to Plaintiffs’ argument 

that, in the instant action, the trial court again focused too narrowly upon the 

percentage of the respective defendant’s overall business conducted in 

Philadelphia. As Hangey explained, in analyzing the quantity prong of the 

test, the number of contacts with Philadelphia County is to be considered from 

the perspective of the county rather than solely from that of the business. 

While a percentage of sales in a county may be miniscule viz-a-viz the 

company’s overall sales, they may nonetheless amount to systematic, 

continuous, and habitual, and therefore “regular,” business in the county. 

However, looking at the specific facts of the instant case, we conclude 

that the trial court’s ruling is a reasonable one. Most significantly, and in 

contrast to the defendant in Hangey, none of Defendants here has any office 

or authorized dealer in Philadelphia County. Such a relationship suggests a 

continuous, habitual connection with a county that is simply not present in 

this case. The trial court acted reasonably here in determining that, despite 

Plaintiffs’ speculation about the strangeness and convenience in the 

testimony, the mere occasional delivery or pickup of a load in Philadelphia 

County did not rise to the level of continuous, habitual contact. 
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Furthermore, while the trial court in Hangey held that the defendant’s 

contacts in that case were indeed of the requisite quality to impart venue, 

here the trial court ruled that none of Defendants had such quality contacts. 

Plaintiffs present us with no challenge to the trial court’s quality assessment, 

nor authority and argument to suggest that the quantity of contacts here is 

such that venue is proper in the absence of quality contacts.

Accordingly, Plaintiff has failed to establish that the trial court abused 

its discretion in sustaining Defendants’ preliminary objections raising improper 

venue on the basis that none of them regularly conducted business in 

Philadelphia County. Therefore, we affirm the trial court’s February 10, 2021 

order sustaining the venue objection and transferring the action to Dauphin 

County.

Order affirmed. 

Judge Nichols and Judge McLaughlin concur in the result.

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.

Prothonotary

Date: 11/19/2021