Court Opinion

ID: 9695660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:26:48.345409+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:15.589737
License: Public Domain

*13SPAETH, Judge,
dissenting:
This case illustrates the fact that the law cannot be reduced to a collection of formulae. Some cases, to be sure, can be decided the way a problem in arithmetic is solved. Either a future interest does, or does not, vest within the period prescribed by the rule against perpetuities. In other cases, however, and I have come to suspect in most, the result will depend upon the spirit in which the particular judge approaches the record before him.
This spirit will vary, for it is determined not only by the judge’s legal training, but by his personal philosophy. The resulting diversity of decision is not to be regretted but rather accepted, for it introduces some play in the law’s joints. No one judge knows best. Every judge, nevertheless, must say what he believes to be best. If his colleagues differ, so be it. Here, the majority finds no abuse of discretion in what the lower court has done. I, on the other hand, am outraged.
The judgment was taken at 9:45 a. m. on the 21st day; it could hardly have been snapped more quickly. The result was that appellant’s home was sold. It is difficult to imagine a result more harsh. The result would not be harsh if appellant had borrowed money and not repaid it; but her offer is to prove that her husband with whom she has not lived since 1957 borrowed the money in 1964 without her knowledge and for his own use, and forged her name to the loan agreement. I submit met with such an offer, the decent business man will respond in only one way: he will satisfy himself whether appellant’s name was forged, and if it was, give her back her home. If instead the business man clings to his judgment, as appellee does here, the decent court should open it.
The majority concedes that “the denial of the petition to open seems particularly harsh.” Majority opinion at II. The majority further concedes, or at any rate does not dispute, that of the three tests that must be met, two *14have been met: the petition was promptly filed; and it offers to prove a meritorious defense (in fact, it offers to prove two meritorious defenses: forgery, and the statute of limitations). Thus it is only with respect to the third test that the majority and I differ.
The third test is that it must appear that appellant’s failure to answer the complaint within twenty days was excusable. Slott v. Triad Distributors, Inc., 230 Pa.Super. 545, 327 A.2d 151, allocatur refused, 230 Pa.Super. xxviii (1974). Appellant offered as her excuse her failure to understand the consequences of not filing an answer. The lower court replied that she should have understood: “The record demonstrates,” said the lower court, “that [appellant] was forty-nine years of age, attended school to the eleventh grade, was able to read and was of average intelligence.” These facts, however, prove very little. The endorsement on the complaint did not tell appellant that if she did not answer, her home might be sold; it simply said that a default judgment might be entered against her. Of course she should have inquired; and of course she should not have ignored the later letters notifying her that judgment had been taken against her and that her property would be sold at the Sheriff’s Sale. Nevertheless, there is nothing to suggest that she had any familiarity with the law. To me it is evident that she thought the claim was for something that was her husband’s responsibility, not hers.1 If her name was forged, ignorant of the law as she was, she was right. Her only mistake was in not realizing that if she did not answer the complaint, what was her husband’s responsibility might be transformed into hers. To say that because she was forty-nine and had gone to the eleventh grade, she should have anticipated such a transformation, is, I think, unfeeling to the point of being callous. It is in any event not the language of a chancellor in equity, and a petition to open is, after all, an appeal to a chancellor. Richmond *15v. A. F. of L. Medical Service Plan of Phila., 415 Pa. 561, 562, 204 A.2d 271, 272 (1964).
The majority says that despite these considerations, there is nothing we can do: “our scope of appellate review is distinctly delimited.” Majority opinion at 11. It is not all that delimited. We may, and should, reverse where there has been an abuse of discretion. One test of whether there has been an abuse is whether “the judgment exercised is manifestly unreasonable.” Garrett’s Estate, 335 Pa. 287, 292-93, 6 A.2d 858, 860 (1939); Johnson v. Yellow Cab Company of Philadelphia, 226 Pa.Super. 270, 272, 307 A.2d 423, 424 (1973); Kilgallen v. Kutna, 226 Pa.Super. 323, 327, 310 A.2d 396, 398 (1973); Weintraub Appeal, 166 Pa.Super. 342, 348, 71 A.2d 823, 825 (1950).
In assessing whether the lower court’s order was manifestly unreasonable, I do not find the majority’s citation of Campbell v. Heilman Homes, Inc., 233 Pa.Super. 366, 335 A.2d 371 (1975), in point. There, the party failing to answer was a business corporation, not, as here, a poor woman ignorant of the law.
A case that is in point is Fox v. Mellon, 438 Pa. 364, 264 A.2d 623 (1970). There, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s denial of a petition to open a snap judgment, stating:
The record shows that the complaint was served, on appellant’s wife and not on his counsel, that his education ended with the ninth grade, and that the notice to plead was in very small letters. A person untrained in the law would not be looking for any such notice, and when it was in such small lettering it was unlikely to catch his attention.
Id. at 367, 264 A.2d at 625 (emphasis added).
In addition, the Court observed:
Taking judgment so early on the twenty-first day together with the small notice to plead gives the impres*16sion that all this was a studied attempt by appellee to obtain a default judgment.

Id.

The same may be said here.
Sta-Rite Industries, Inc. v. Century Water Treating, 230 Pa.Super. 285, 326 A.2d 425 (1974), is also in point. There, this court reversed a denial of a petition to open. The appellant had taken over the presidency of k corporation after the death of her husband, and had signed a note payable to the appellee to satisfy a debt for past delivered supplies. The appellant was personally served with a complaint that demanded payment of the amount due plus interest. During part of the time allotted for answering the complaint, the appellant was out of town because of her job, and she was unsuccessful in attempts to communicate with her attorney. This court said:
[A]lthough appellant served as president of Century, we are unconvinced that she fully realized and understood the significance of the legal documents confronting her. . . . This is ... a case dealing with a less than fully informed person burdened by a default judgment entered soon after the statutory period for response had passed. . . . [T]he facts of the case demand the [sic] equitable relief.
Id. at 288-89, 326 A.2d at 427 (emphasis added).
Here, appellant’s only work experience has been as a domestic and a laborer. This and her limited education adequately explain why she did not understand the significance of not filing an answer to the complaint. When one also considers that the judgment was snap, that appellant has been deprived of a chance to prove two meritorious defenses, and that she has lost her home, it seems to me that the action of the lower court in refusing to open the judgment was most unreasonable.
The order of the lower court should be reversed.
PRICE and VAN der VOORT, JJ., join in this opinion.

. All notices were addressed to Harold Harris and Claudia Harris.