Court Opinion

ID: 9770125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:46:38.983585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:14.473140
License: Public Domain

Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
As I understand the majority opinion, it limits the single-criminal-episode overlay of Freundt v. PennDOT, 584 Pa. 283, 883 A.2d 503 (2005), to one subsection of Section 1532 — despite the materially identical terms of other subsections of the same statute — thus disapproving the first line of reasoning employed in Drabic v. PennDOT, 588 Pa. 670, 906 A.2d 1153 (2006). The rationale is that Freundt is “readily distinguishable,” Majority Opinion, at 495-96, 17 A.3d at 328, based on various factors remote from the core statutory terms.
As Appellant highlights, side-by-side, the controlling terms in this case, and those from Freundt, are:
The department shall suspend the operating privilege of any driver ... upon receiving a certified record of the driver’s conviction of ... any offense under the following provisions ....
The department shall suspend the operating privilege of any person upon receiving a certified record of the person’s conviction of any offense involving....
75 Pa.C.S. § 1532(b)(1), (c) (emphasis added).
While Freundt may be distinguishable from the present case for the various reasons referenced by the majority, see Majority Opinion, at 494-96, 17 A.3d at 328-29, and perhaps for several others, it is not distinguishable on the material, operative language of the relevant statutory provisions.1 *498Freundt's continued longevity means this Court will maintain that the Legislature meant “offense” when it said “offense” in the first of these substantively identical passages, but it meant something entirely different — namely, a criminal episode, or some larger collection of offenses — when it said “offense” in the second passage. I continue to find such a reading of these parallel, sequential provisions to be untenable as a matter of statutory interpretation. See Freundt, 584 Pa. at 292, 883 A.2d at 508 (Saylor, J., dissenting).
I dissented in both Freundt and Drabic, because I believed (and believe) they both represented material departures from conventional statutory interpretation. See Freundt, 584 Pa. at 292, 883 A.2d at 508 (Saylor, J., dissenting); Drabic, 588 Pa. at 689-90, 906 A.2d at 1164-65 (Saylor, J., dissenting). I also maintain the concern that these types of deviations from a statute’s plain terms are deleterious, in that they substantially widen the pathways for differences regarding otherwise straightforward language used by the Legislature, thus unduly complicating both the processes of legislative drafting and the ensuing judicial review.
*499I regard both Freundt and Drabic as candidates for overruling consistent with the established exception to stare decisis applicable to decisions which are not adequately supported in reason. The impediment here is that PennDOT has now accepted Freundt for the limited purpose of Section 1582(c), and, more broadly, Drabic’s merger analysis.
PennDOT’s approach perhaps reflects a pragmatic recognition that courts often seem to prefer limiting such problematic judicial decisions as closely as possible over outright disavowals of their own previous decisions. See generally Jeff Todd, Undead Precedent: The Curse of a Holding “Limited to Its Facts ”, 40 Tex. Tech L.Rev. 67, 74 (2007). In the circumstances, as to Freundt, I must agree that the limiting the single-criminal-episode overlay to Section 1532(c) does seem to be the best of the options presently made available to the Court. For my part, however, I would anchor the justification more solidly in Freundt’s shortcomings relative to the central, controlling statutory terms, rather than in more tangential distinguishing characteristics.

. In terms of the distinctions drawn by the majority, while it indicates that the Legislature did not envision a "volume discount" for traffic offenses, Majority Opinion, at 495, 17 A.3d at 328, no explanation has been provided as to why such a discount was intended for drug offenses. Moreover, there is no evidence that the Legislature shares the majority’s view that drug offenses are remote from roadway safety concerns. See id. at 494-96, 17 A.3d at 328-29 (indicating that "violations of the Controlled Substances Act do not directly relate to traffic *498safety”). Indeed, the opposite view can be easily maintained, particularly given the pervasiveness of automobiles in our society and the General Assembly's zero-tolerance approach to the presence of Schedule I, II, or III controlled substances in an individual’s blood while driving (with no actual impairment being required). See 75 Pa.C.S. § 3802(d)(1).
Finally, the majority offers a valid observation concerning the graduation of suspension periods attaching to different offense categories under Section 1532(b)’s subparts. See Majority Opinion, at 495-96, 17 A.3d at 328. Nevertheless, there should be little doubt that — had Legislature believed "offense” meant "single criminal episode” as Freundt holds — it would have envisioned a suspension commensurate with the most serious offense committed (since the alternative is a magnified volume discount). Thus, I do not share the majority’s uncertainty in this regard. See id. Alternatively, under a Freundt-based rationale, a close parallel easily could be drawn between each individual subpart of Section 1532(b) and Section 1532(c), so that, for example, Appellant would receive only a single 6-month suspension for his two Section 1532(b)(1) offenses deriving from the same criminal episode.
My point is not that any of these scenarios represents an accurate depiction of the legislative design. Again, it is only that Section 1532(b) is not so readily distinguishable from Section 1532(c) in light of the substantially identical core, operative language.