Court Opinion

ID: 9697852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:34:27.793555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:36.107928
License: Public Domain

*135McEWEN, Judge,
concurring:
The expression of position by the author of the majority view is, as her colleagues have come to expect, most perceptive and, ¿s well, persuasive. Thus it is that I rush to concur in the decision of the majority to affirm the judgment entered by the trial court in favor of appellee. I differ, however, with the declaration of the majority that the Randall1 rule should replace the Bighum/Roots2 standard for the admission of evidence of a prior conviction for purposes of impeachment of a witness.
It strikes me that our esteemed colleague, Judge Peter Paul Olszewski, in Carlson Min. Co. v. Titan Coal Co., Inc., 343 Pa.Super. 364, 494 A.2d 1127 (1985), expressed quite valid and abundant basis for . reliance upon the discretion of the trial court to fairly balance in a civil proceeding the prejudicial/probative factors of the prior conviction of the witness. Moreover, I am not ready to accede to the federal system such presumption of enlightenment as to confer upon that system a lead role in the establishment of evidentiary principles. Since, in my view, the hues of factors and issues attendant a civil proceeding differ in essence and number from the focus of a criminal proceeding, I am compelled to the conclusion that the decision upon the admissibility of such evidence in a civil proceeding is more soundly left to the instincts and discretion of the trial judge than to an inflexible and rigid rule.
Nonetheless, since the decision of the trial court to admit the evidence of the prior conviction of the witness in the instant case did not compose such prejudice to appellant as to require a new trial, I concur in the decision of my eminent colleagues to affirm the judgment in favor of appellee.

. Commonwealth v. Randall, 515 Pa. 410, 528 A.2d 1326 (1987) (dissenting opinions by Chief Justice Nix and Justice Zappala).

. Commonwealth v. Bighum, 452 Pa. 554, 307 A.2d 255 (1973), and Commonwealth v. Roots, 482 Pa. 33, 393 A.2d 364 (1978).