Court Opinion

ID: 9713404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:14:51.274037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:18.603250
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority’s unsupportable refusal to grant the Attorney General’s application for reargument. The application of the Attorney General sets forth ample meritorious and persuasive grounds for granting reargument and cogently presents jurisprudential, practical and compelling reasons to correct the majority’s erroneous decision.
The controlling cases cited by the Attorney General reaffirm and reemphasize the well-established rule, long the law in this Commonwealth, that extensions of the statutory period for filing of appeals are “only justified where there is fraud or some breakdown in the court’s operation.” West Penn Power Co. v. Goddard, 460 Pa. 551, 556, 333 A.2d 909, 912 (1975). See also Dixon Estate, 443 Pa. 303, 279 A.2d 39 (1971); Nixon v. Nixon, 329 Pa. 256, 198 A. 154 (1936); Wise v. Cambridge Springs Borough, 262 Pa. 139, 104 A. 863 (1918). Here there is absolutely no evidence or even suggestion of fraud or breakdown. All that is here is, as appellant concedes, a delay caused by appellant’s privately retained counsel. Thus, the circumstances of this case provide no basis for departing from the Legislature’s and this Court’s *266proscription against untimely appeals. The statutory thirty day filing requirement is a legislative determination that appeals if taken must be within that period. That requirement is a legislative judgment that statutory timely appeals and adjudicative finality advance the quality of our jurisprudence. That determination is binding upon all and the legislatively fixed thirty days does not mean thirty days plus as many additional days as the majority sees fit to grant.
The majority’s arbitrary departure here from the fixed statutory time limits for filing appeals will surely come as a startling and unwelcome surprise to the bench, bar and particularly the Legislature. Basic to our jurisprudence is the fundamental rule that courts not intrude on the province of the Legislature. Yet, as the Attorney General notes in his application for reargument,
“In this case, the Court has dramatically extended this exception [to the rule] to include ‘non-negligent’ delays by counsel. . . . [T]his new rule invites abuse by litigants and places an unworkable burden upon appellate courts ... to determine whether, or not a particular lawyer was negligent given all the circumstances of that particular case.”
The majority’s decision creates, “a new and unnecessary layer of delay, mandating a special inquiry whenever an appeal is untimely filed.” Bass v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 485 Pa. 263, 401 A.2d 1136, 1137 (1979) (Dissenting Opinion, Roberts, J., joined by Eagen, C. J.). “Is not today’s action a signal to litigants that the majority is abandoning the timeliness requirements firmly established by Pennsylvania statutory and decisional law and by our rules of court and will grant relief as it sees fit, based not on law or precedent but rather on what is asserted to be the staff situation in an attorney’s office? Today it is the claimed illness of an employee which the majority says is persuasive. Tomorrow will it not be the claimed illness of a member of the employee’s family or whatever the reasons for an employee’s absence or any other irrelevance?” Id.
In reality, the majority has disregarded the long controlling thirty day rule and has instead substituted its own *267vague, standardless, and undefined exception for extensions of the thirty day appeal period. Can anyone now or in the future say whether a judgment unappealed for thirty days is final or is still appealable under the majority’s new exception to and extension of the thirty day rule? The majority’s refusal in this case to enforce the statutorily prescribed time limit for filing an appeal and the majority’s failure to apply our previously clear and long announced case law creates confusion in appeal procedures and the administration of justice. See generally, Bass, supra (Dissenting Opinion).
In sum, the argument in the Attorney General’s application conclusively establishes that the majority decision flies in the face of the specific legislative mandate limiting the time for appeals. Jurisprudential wisdom and the integrity of the appellate process dictate that the majority’s decision be withdrawn and corrected to comply with the statutory requirements and controlling case law of this Court.
At the very least, and in light of the Attorney General’s position that “the Commonwealth has a vital interest in this matter in that it is a party in hundred[s], if not thousands of cases annually,” the worthy and meritorious application of the Attorney General should be granted and reargument ordered.