Court Opinion

ID: 9750289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:46:56.685406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:06.624311
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
concurring.
I agree that the holding of Blackwell v. Commonwealth, State Ethics Commission, 523 Pa. 347, 567 A.2d 630 (1989) {Blackwell II), should be applied to that case and all cases pending at the time of that decision in which the issue had been raised and properly preserved. I write separately because I believe confusion could arise from Justice Larsen’s imprecise use of terms and citations to authority with regard to prospective and retroactive application of decisions. Specifically, I believe the majority errs in describing Chevron Oil Company v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 92 S.Ct. 349, 30 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), as setting out factors to be considered in determining whether a decision should be applied “wholly prospectively ”, if, as it appears, the phrase “wholly prospectively” is intended to be synonymous with the phrase “purely prospective” as used on page 11 of the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court.
The question in Chevron Oil was whether the Court’s decision in Rodrigue v. Aetna Casualty and Surety Co., 395 U.S. 352, 89 S.Ct. 1835, 23 L.Ed.2d 360 (1969), that state *190law applied to claims arising out of injuries on off-shore drilling platforms, should be applied to Huson’s case, which was in pre-trial discovery at the time Rodrigue was decided. Before Rodrigue, a line of federal appellate decisions had held that general admiralty law applied to such claims. Under this approach, the timeliness of Huson’s claim was subject to the equitable doctrine of laches, and it had not been contested on this basis. The District Court, relying on Rodrigue, applied the state law one year statute of limitations and held the action time barred. The Supreme Court decided that it was inappropriate to give Rodrigue retroactive effect. Rodrigue had not been decided until more than three years after the injury; it would have been inequitable to hold Huson to a limitations period that had expired before he could have become aware of its applicability. The important point for purposes of this discussion, however, is to note that Chevron Oil involved whether to apply Rodrigue retroactively; the decision in Rodrigue had been applied to the parties in that case. Thus Chevron Oil was not a case involving “purely prospective application” of a new rule.
As Justice Larsen notes, we have recognized four approaches to deciding what effect to give to a decision announcing a new rule. For purposes of clarity, I believe each of these approaches should be consistently referred to by a single designation, and that cases employing them should be properly identified. The first approach, in which a new rule is not even applied to the parties to the case in which the rule is announced, may be described as giving the new rule “purely prospective effect”. The second approach, in which the new rule is applied to the parties to the ease in which the rule is announced and litigation commenced thereafter, is best described, I believe, as giving the new rule “prospective effect”. Chevron Oil/Rodrigue presents such a situation. The third approach, in which the new rule is applied to the case in which it is announced and all other cases then pending on direct review where the issue is raised, may be said to give the new rule “retroac*191tive effect”. This is the general rule adopted in Commonwealth v. Cabeza, 503 Pa. 228, 469 A.2d 146 (1983). The fourth approach, in which the new rule is applied even where the issue has been finally decided at the time of the decision announcing the new rule but later is asserted in collateral proceedings, may be described as giving the new rule “fully retroactive effect”.
NIX, C.J., and CAPPY, J., join in this concurring opinion.