Court Opinion

ID: 9703738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:06:14.76566+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:51.474183
License: Public Domain

NEWMAN, Justice, dissenting.
I dissent. The lead opinion’s abolition of the “equivalent period” doctrine is such an unwarranted break from the common law, and will have such drastic consequences for practitioners, that I cannot subscribe to it.
The central question in this case is whether one attempt to serve a writ of summons that was issued within the limitations period can qualify as a “good faith” effort sufficient to avoid a statute of limitation defense, or whether a court may inquire into the subsequent efforts of the plaintiff to effect service in determining “good faith.” The lead opinion has chosen the latter course, and, in doing so, has jettisoned a well-understood doctrine in favor of an uncertain and onerous standard, which now demands that process “be immediately and continually reissued until service is made.” This elimination of the “equivalent period” doctrine ignores the statutory definition of when an action commences, provides insufficient guidance for courts and practitioners in determining whether the “good faith” standard has been satisfied, and disregards the other *400protections available to defendants where a plaintiff has been dilatory in effecting service.
Generally, statutes of limitation require that “[a]n action, proceeding or appeal must be commenced within the time specified in or pursuant to this chapter....” 42 Pa.C.S. § 5501(a) (emphasis added). The legislature has defined the commencement of an action as, “[a] matter is commenced for the purposes of this chapter when a document embodying the matter is filed in an office authorized ... to receive such document.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 5503(a) (emphasis added). Nothing in Pennsylvania’s statutes requires service on a defendant in order to satisfy the limitations period that governs a particular action — the only requirement is that the action be filed in the appropriate office. Nor does the rule of civil procedure regarding the commencement of an action state otherwise: “[a]n action may be commenced by filing with the prothonotary (1) a praecipe for writ of summons, or (2) a complaint.” Pa.R.C.P. 1007. A plain reading of the statute and our rules of civil procedure, therefore, would lead one to believe that the mere act of obtaining a -writ of summons or filing a complaint would be enough for a plaintiff to avoid a defense that the applicable statute of limitation bars his or her lawsuit.
What this Court did when it created the “equivalent period” doctrine was to halt a practice which, although technically in compliance with the statutory mandates for satisfaction of the statute of limitation, frustrated the goal of expeditious resolution of disputes. Because the statute allowed a plaintiff to toll the limitations period merely by filing his or her action, it was possible for a plaintiff to obtain a writ of summons by filing a praecipe and then do nothing to advance the litigation, thus sitting on the action indefinitely. This Court developed the “equivalent period” doctrine to limit this activity, and explained the operation of the rule in Zarlinsky v. Laudenslager, 402 Pa. 290, 167 A.2d 317 (1961):
Prior to the adoption of the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure ... we held on a number of occasions that, when a statute of limitations required an action to be brought within a specified period of time and such an action was *401instituted by the issuance of a writ of summons against the defendant which was not served, the plaintiff could continue process to keep his cause of action alive by the issuance of an alias writ of summons, but that he had to do so within a period of time which, measured from the issuance of the original writ, was not longer than the time required by the applicable statute of limitations for the bringing of the action, and that subsequent pluries writs of summons had to be issued within the same period of time measured from the issuance of the preceding writ.....Thus it was, that this court imposed a rule of limitation for the continuing of process to keep alive an action by analogy to the statute of limitation for the bringing of the action.
Id. at 319-20 (citations omitted). Therefore, in the common-law rule described in Zarlinsky, a plaintiff who obtained a writ of summons was protected from the bar of the statute of limitation, but only for a period of time equivalent to the original limitations period.1
Although it afforded some protection to defendants against stale litigation, the Zarlinsky rule nevertheless tolerated an abusive practice that this Court sought to correct in Lamp v. Heyman, 469 Pa. 465, 366 A.2d 882 (1976): the failure to give the defendant actual notice of the lawsuit by obtaining a writ of summons but refusing to serve it. In Lamp, the plaintiffs cause of action accrued on September 1, 1967. Lamp’s attorney instituted suit on August 28, 1969, within the two-year limitation period, by filing a praecipe for a writ of summons, however he instructed the prothonotary not to deliver the writ to the sheriff for service. He then reissued the writ two more times, but did not effectuate service until June 19, 1970. The trial court granted the defendants’ preliminary objections that the statute of limitation barred Lamp’s action, which the Superior Court affirmed per curiam. We reversed, noting that the Zarlinsky rule imposed no obligation on the plaintiff *402to attempt service of the defendant and that the mere filing of the writ of summons triggered the protection of the equivalent period. However, the Court announced a prospective modification of the Zarlinsky rule intended to halt this vest-pocket summons practice:
Our purpose is to avoid the situation in which a plaintiff can bring an action, but, by not making a good faith effort to notify a defendant, retain exclusive control over it for a period in excess of that permitted by the statute of limitations.
Accordingly, pursuant to our supervisory power over Pennsylvania courts, we rule that henceforth ... a writ of summons shall remain effective to commence an action only if the plaintiff then refrains from a course of conduct which serves to stall in its tracks the legal machinery he has just set in motion.
Lamp, 366 A.2d at 889. We subsequently interpreted the Lamp rule as requiring that plaintiffs make “a good-faith effort to effectuate notice of commencement of the action.” See Farinacci v. Beaver County Indus. Dev. Auth., 510 Pa. 589, 511 A.2d 757, 759 (1986).
However, we have not defined the scope of Lamp’s inquiry into the plaintiffs good-faith efforts to serve the defendant. The specific problem that the present case addresses is whether a plaintiff who engages in a single good-faith effort to serve a writ of summons can wait for an additional period of time equal to the original limitations period in which to serve the defendant, or whether the plaintiff must make continuous efforts to serve the defendant beyond the one attempt in order to keep the action alive. By abolishing the equivalent period doctrine, the lead opinion has chosen the latter standard. In so doing, the lead opinion has gone too far in extrapolating the Lamp rule to impose an obligation on a plaintiff to make continuous efforts to serve the defendant in order to meet the “good faith” standard.
I believe that a correct reading of Lamp requires only that a plaintiff attempt in good faith to serve the particular *403process issued within the limitations period and that, so long as the plaintiff acted in good faith by complying with the rules for service of process, he or she should benefit from the “equivalent period”, i.e., protection from a limitations defense for a span of time equal to the limitations period that applies to the cause of action. The Third Circuit’s opinion in Patterson v. American Bosch Corp., 914 F.2d 384 (3d Cir.1990), best illustrates the interplay between a plaintiffs good-faith efforts to serve process and the equivalent period. In Patterson, the plaintiff was injured on December 4,1986, at his workplace by a hydraulic cranking system manufactured by the defendant. His first attorney filed a writ of summons on August 31, 1987 (within the applicable two-year limitations period) and attempted to serve the writ unsuccessfully on September 8, 1987. On October 15, 1987, Patterson’s attorney filed a praecipe for reissuance of the writ that he delivered to the sheriff on October 19, 1987, which resulted in another unsuccessful attempt to serve the defendant on November 5,1987. For the next seventeen months, there was no effort to reissue the writ or to serve the defendant. On May 1, 1989, Patterson hired a new attorney, who reissued the writ on May 5, 1989 and successfully served the defendant by mail on May 26, 1989. The defendant removed the action to federal court and moved to dismiss the action based on the expiration of the statute of limitation. The trial court accepted the defendant’s arguments that the seventeen-month delay between the last attempt to serve the writ and the eventual successful service “nullified the tolling effect of the filing of the praecipes in August and October of 1987.” 914 F.2d at 387. A panel of the Third Circuit reversed, in a 2-1 decision, and held that “[i]n our view, the Lamp rule is satisfied once the plaintiff has complied in good faith with the procedural requirements and local practice for the issuance and service of a writ of summons. As long as the plaintiff files a praecipe for reissuance of the writ within the ‘equivalent period,’ we do not believe that Lamp dictates an additional affirmative duty to pursue service of process if the initial good-faith service attempt is unsuccessful.” Id. at 391.
*404The interpretation of Lamp offered by the Patterson court is consistent with other Pennsylvania authorities on this question. See 2 Standard Pennsylvania Practice 2d, § 13:204; Goodrich Amram 2d, § 401(b):4. In the present case, the lead opinion goes beyond merely holding that this is an incorrect understanding of the Lamp rule. Instead, the lead opinion rewrites the Lamp rule, abolishes the equivalent period doctrine, and offers in its place the following standard:
Given the importance of service of original process in completing the progression of events by which an action is commenced, we deem it necessary that where that progression “straddles the line” of the limitation period the process must be served within the time allowed by the Rules of Civil Procedure or, if service cannot be made, the process must be immediately and continually reissued until service is made.
Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, p. 9. Now, for example, if a plaintiff obtains a writ of summons one year and 364 days after his or her cause of action accrued, where a two-year limitations period applies, and attempts — in good faith but unsuccessfully — to serve the defendant with that writ, that good faith effort will no longer afford the plaintiff another two years in which to attempt to serve the defendant.
Under the lead opinion’s standard, a plaintiff now must reissue the writ “immediately and continually” until service is made. In cases where the plaintiff is attempting to serve the defendant in Pennsylvania, the writ of summons remains valid process for only thirty days. Pa.R.C.P. 401(a). If the plaintiff is unable to serve the defendant with that writ within thirty days of its issuance, he or she must seek reissuance of the writ “immediately.” Whereas the equivalent period doctrine provided certainty as to how much time the plaintiff had in which to attempt to locate and properly serve a defendant, lower courts now must evaluate whether a plaintiffs actions to locate and serve the defendant, following an unsuccessful attempt to serve the defendant at the end of the limitations period, were sufficiently “immediate.” If a writ is returned, “defendant not found”, and the plaintiff waits a week before attempting to *405ascertain the defendant’s whereabouts, has he or she acted “immediately” enough to satisfy the lead opinion’s standard? What about one month? The lead opinion’s new standard will undoubtedly require additional litigation into the scope of plaintiffs efforts to locate and serve a defendant after an unsuccessful, but good faith, attempt to serve the originally-issued process.
Moreover, I do not believe that the “immediately and continuously” standard proposed by the lead opinion is necessary to protect defendants from a plaintiffs failure to serve a defendant in an expeditious manner. A defendant who claims that the plaintiffs delay in prosecuting the action caused him or her prejudice may seek a non-pros dismissal. See Jacobs v. Halloran, 551 Pa. 350, 710 A.2d 1098 (1998). The availability of a non pros dismissal serves two purposes: (1) it protects a defendant from having to defend a lawsuit in unfair circumstances where the plaintiffs delay has caused actual harm to the defense; (2) by requiring a showing of prejudice, it ensures that a plaintiffs action is not dismissed without an adjudication on the merits, thus denying a plaintiff his or her day in court, unless the plaintiffs own actions have deprived the defendant of a fair proceeding. The remedy of a non-pros dismissal, therefore, constitutes a more even-handed mechanism for policing a dilatory plaintiff than the standard now imposed by the lead opinion.2
*406Finally, the lead opinion’s standard assumes that plaintiffs need the compulsion of another grounds for dismissal of their lawsuit in order to be encouraged to pursue service of the defendant vigorously. That assumption ignores the plaintiffs basic motivation in filing the action in the first place: obtaining a judgment. Of course, since service of process is necessary 3 to establish personal jurisdiction over a defendant, and because there can be no enforceable judgment from a court that lacks jurisdiction, it will always be in the plaintiffs interests to serve the defendant. The lead opinion’s new rule creates a punitive standard that fails to take into account these basic mechanics of the litigation process and will, in all probability, result in an increase in the dismissal of lawsuits without the plaintiffs having had the benefit of their “day in court.”
In the present matter, the record strongly indicates that the effort to serve the City with the process issued on September 12, 1996, was in good faith. Although Witherspoon used a private process server, rather than the sheriffs department, this practice is specifically permitted by our Rules of Civil Procedure for service within the City of Philadelphia. See Pa.R.C.P. 400.1(a)(1). According to the Affidavit of Service completed by the process server, there was an attempt to serve the City within the thirty days that the writ of summons remained valid process. See Pa.R.C.P. 401(a). Because the trial court ruled on the City’s preliminary objections without allowing the parties to present testimony, however, we have nothing in the record to show whether the process server *407appeared at the proper location to serve the City, although Witherspoon claims that he complied with the rules governing service of a political subdivision. See Pa.R.C.P. 422(b). I believe the trial court should have permitted Witherspoon to have a hearing to support his contention that he believed service had been properly made and did not discover the failure to serve until a later time. At the very least, I would remand to the trial court to conduct a hearing regarding Witherspoon’s service efforts with respect to the writ of summons issued on September 12, 1996, and to determine whether those efforts qualified as a “good faith” attempt to serve the City.
For these reasons, I dissent.
CAPPY, J., joins this Dissenting Opinion.

. For example, if a particular action was governed by a two-year statute of limitation, a plaintiff who obtained a writ of summons one year and eleven months from the accrual of his or her cause of action could keep the action alive for an additional two years from the issuance of the writ.

. I reiterate my position that once the praecipe for a writ of summons, or complaint, is filed as original process within the limitations period, the statute of limitation no longer applies. Rather, it has been the "equivalent period" doctrine described in Zarlinsky, and the modification of that doctrine in Lamp, which have placed additional restraints on plaintiffs and given defendants the ability to dismiss an action where the plaintiff failed to effect service in a timely fashion. Strictly speaking, however, that ability to dismiss the action has not been based on the bar of the statute of limitation, but has been based on the failure to satisfy the Lamp rule. Cf. Zarlinsky, 167 A.2d at 319 (“The [statute of limitation] is without direct bearing on the issue here involved since the plaintiffs filed their praecipe for writ of summons ...within two years of the happening of the accident. The statutory period of limitation becomes important, however, by analogy and furnishes the basis for the rule promulgated by the decision of this court with respect to the period of time within which a plaintiff must act to protect the efficiency of a writ of summons issued but not served.”) (emphasis added). Accord*406ingly, I find the lead opinion’s reliance on “the policy underlying limitations periods as a whole” inapposite, particularly where the legislature has not made actual service on the defendant a requirement for satisfaction of the statute of limitation.

. Rule 430 provides that ”[i]f service cannot be made under the applicable rule the plaintiff may move the court for a special order directing the method of service.” Pa.R.C.P. 430(a). As the rule plainly states, however, this is an option of last resort for a plaintiff who has exhausted all reasonable efforts to locate the defendant for service. I fear the lead opinion’s decision will encourage plaintiffs to apply for alternative service orders too hastily out of concern that any prolonged investigation into the whereabouts of a defendant will result in a failure to satisfy the lead opinion's "immediately and continuously” standard.