Court Opinion

ID: 9731503
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:47:45.904737+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:18.735527
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority’s approach to the problem at hand as a great waste of judicial time and resources. I take it that the majority has determined that employees lack standing to challenge OES determinations of seasonal status because they are not “aggrieved” under Wm. Penn Parking Garage v. City of Pittsburgh, 464 Pa. 168, 346 A.2d 269 (1975) (plurality opinion). They are not “aggrieved” because they can later challenge seasonal status of the employer in individual unemployment compensation hearings. This is circular reasoning, at best. This Court could grant standing and apply res judicata to later unemployment compensation hearings on the *615seasonal status issue if we so chose. Standing and res judicata effect are directly related. So are lack of standing and no res judicata effect. We must pick which pair of related doctrines to adopt. It seems to me that a great deal of time and litigation would be saved in this case and generally if employees were granted standing to litigate the issue early on and if they did, they would later be bound thereby in the unemployment compensation hearings under the doctrine of res judicata. This would preserve the instant appeals, prevent piecemeal adjudication of the issue and reduce the possibility of conflicting results later on.
The employees’ standing here is analogous to the standing plaintiffs enjoy in bringing a declaratory judgment action. See, Valley Forge Historical Society v. Washington Memorial Chapel, 493 Pa. 491, 426 A.2d 1123 (1981); Pa.R.C.P. 1601, et seq. They are not yet injured, but a direct injury is foreseeable if a judicial declaration of rights is not granted. Employees would be free, of course, to bring a class action if they so desired that would later be binding in all subsequent unemployment compensation hearings of a particular employer with respect to the seasonal status issue. But the instant employees should at least be free to litigate the seasonal status issue as they did here, thus binding themselves to the result reached later on (and binding the employer in any event if it loses). Standing is an issue to be faced by this Court, not left to the legislature. The instant appeals encompass a large number of hearings, trials and proceedings. I would not render them all moot, but attempt to save time and judicial resources by deciding the substantive issues at hand. The parties deserve nothing less than a decision on the merits, as do employees in later cases of a similar nature.