Court Opinion

ID: 9644747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:03:45.550445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:06:55.010213
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Roberts:
I join the majority in holding that the trial court in this case properly confined the appellant’s closing argument to the jury to just one attorney. This is a matter clearly within the discretion of the trial court and the record is free from any showing that the trial court abused its discretion.
I also find an area of agreement with the dissenting opinion. I seriously doubt that the instant case would have arisen or presented a question of any merit whatsoever were it not for the broad language in Jedwabny v. Philadelphia, Transp. Co., 390 Pa. 231, 135 A. 2d 252 (1957). The sweeping language there indicates that in any case where a plaintiff is made an additional defendant he must have two attorneys to represent two allegedly conflicting interests. As applied to this *492case, I agree with the Chief Justice that the language of Jedwabny results in an unrealistic, unwise and artificial concept. In Jedwabny there were a number of plaintiffs and under those circumstances there may have been a conflict of interest, as witnessed by the dilemma of the plaintiff’s attorney at the post-trial motion stage. However, I can not see how the A.B.A. Canons of Professional Ethics prevent, as the broad language of Jedwabny indicate they do, an attorney from representing one person in his position as plaintiff and that same person in his position as an additional defendant. Canon 6, by its terms, applies only where the attorney seeks to represent more than one person.
Absent other plaintiffs whom the attorney also seeks to represent, there is no conflict of interest. In both roles the plaintiff-additional defendant is seeking to prove himself free of any negligence and to establish the negligence of the original defendant.