Court Opinion

ID: 9635327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:47:12.381637+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:54.005900
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION BY
Senior Judge KELLEY.
I respectfully dissent.
The Majority found its reasoning solely on the premise that the Court of Common Pleas of Indiana County (Trial Court) “implicitly found Officer Emigh credible by relying on his account of the events.” Majority Opinion at 8. The acceptance of this implication is contradicted by the Trial Court’s own language, notwithstanding its failure to express a clear credibility determination, and is further belied by the Trial Court’s disposition in this matter.
The Trial Court first recounted Officer Emigh’s testimony regarding the Licensee’s operation of his vehicle prior to the Officer’s personal confrontation with Licensee, and the Officer’s response to the convenience store where a store clerk described an actor and a vehicle matching the Licensee. The Trial Court recounted no conflicting evidence on any of these points, and can be safely presumed to have accepted Officer Emigh’s testimony thereon as credible by reference to the Trial Court’s own description of these events as having been “clear[ly]” established. Noticeably absent from this portion of the evidence, and from this portion of Officer Emigh’s testimony, is any reference to alcohol, or to the Licensee’s intoxication.
Officer Emigh’s testimony regarding intoxication was also recounted by the Trial Court, which noted conflicting evidence including the Officer’s perception of inebriation upon confronting Licensee after he had been driving, and Licensee’s actual possession of an open alcoholic beverage after Licensee had been operating his vehicle. Notably absent from this conflicting evidence was any corroborating evidence from any other source regarding Licensee’s intoxication before or during the period in which he was assumed to have been operating his vehicle. The Trial Court did clearly state that the lack of any corroborating evidence of intoxication by the convenience store employee, who had interacted with Licensee a matter of minutes prior to Officer Emigh’s confrontation with Licensee, was “of great weight”.
While the Trial Court’s employ of the phrase “great weight” in relation to its recounting of the evidence it found sufficient and/or credible is not dispositive in regards to credibility, the only “implicit finding”, in the currency of the Majority’s language, that I can reasonably ascertain from this language is that of a credibility determination. I find this to be significantly more conclusive than the Majority’s assumption in light of the Trial Court’s result, and in light of the presumption regularly afforded to parties who have prevailed on the merits in proceedings below. The very fact that the Trial Court stated that it found “little or no evidence that the [Licensee] operated the vehicle while under the influence of alcohol” contradicts PennDOT’s “implicit credibility” theory in regards to the Officer’s testimony, and in fact implies just the opposite — that said testimony was found not credible by the Trial Court.
To find an implied credibility determination, which would directly contradict the Trial Court’s result, and which would fail *1189to acknowledge which evidence below was uncontroverted, and which evidence was conflicted, usurps, in my opinion, the fact finding function and exclusive credibility province of the Trial Court in this matter. Millili v. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing, 745 A.2d 111 (Pa.Cmwlth.2000) (Determinations as to the credibility of witnesses and the weight assigned to the evidence are solely within the province of the factfinder); Department of Transportation, Bureau of Traffic Safety v. O’Connell, 521 Pa. 242, 555 A.2d 873 (1989) (Conflicts in the evidence are for the trial court to resolve and are improper questions for appellate review). To find controlling implications in the Trial Court’s opinion on review, as has the Majority herein, fails to respect these exclusive provinces of the Trial Court in the absence of its express articulations, and further fails to accord the Trial Court its due deference as the finder of fact in the first instance.
Simply, put, the plain language of the Trial Court’s opinion, when examined within the context of the unopposed and contradictory evidence presented below, and with account for the Trial Court’s result as reached below, cannot support the Majority’s dispositive assumption.
Further, I disagree with the Majority’s interpretation of the Trial Court’s citation to Fierst v. Commonwealth1 and to Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing v. Mulholland2 as having been applied to PennDOT’s burden. The Trial Court’s opinion neither states, nor can reasonably be read to imply, that any such burden was placed upon PennDOT. That opinion, when read as a whole, clearly and expressly relied on the lack of corroborated (and presumably, therefore, credible) evidence of intoxication, and cited to Fierst and Mulholland merely as support for similar grants of licensee appeals in the absence of such credible evidence, as in the instant case.
According the Trial Court due deference to its credibility determinations, and with any necessary presumptions on review properly accorded to the prevailing party below, I would affirm.

. 115 Pa.Cmwlth. 263, 539 A.2d 1389 (1988).

. 107 Pa.Cmwlth. 213, 527 A.2d 1123 (1987).