Court Opinion

ID: 9734051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:23:57.308786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:10.178947
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Judge,
concurring:
I agree with the result reached by the majority. The facts presented in this case do not involve either fraud or some breakdown in the trial court’s operation through default of its officers. The conclusion by the Honorable Paul B. Greiner that the appellant must be denied any right to file notice of appeal nunc pro tunc is eminently sound and must be affirmed.
*463I depart from my colleagues in their belief that Bass v. Commonwealth, 485 Pa. 256, 401 A.2d 1133 (1979) must be revisited and analyzed in disposing of this appeal.
Firstly, appellant has asked us to determine whether the facts presented “constitute: ‘fraud, breakdown, or extraordinary cause’ which would allow filing of an appeal nunc pro tunc.” Brief for appellant, pages i, 3 and 8. Although the appellee, in its brief, refers to Bass in passing, while relying on Dorney Park Coaster Company, Inc. v. Board of Commissioners South Whitehall Township, 503 Pa. 67, 468 A.2d 462 (1983), the appellant neither cites to Bass nor makes a clear argument for non-negligent failure to file an appeal.
Secondly, I am not persuaded that Bass has any precedential value with regard to allowance of appeal nunc pro tunc. Only five members of the Supreme Court participated in the decision in Bass. Justice Manderino wrote the opinion in which only Justice Larson joined. This was less than a majority of those participating. Justice (now Chief Justice) Nix filed a concurring opinion in which he stated that he agreed with the result reached, and was “substantially in accord with the reasoning employed to reach that result.” Justice Roberts filed a strong dissent in which then-Chief Justice Eagen joined. Justice O’Brien did not participate. While one cannot dispute that the Bass opinion is decisional, it is not clear to me, and I am not persuaded, that it is precedential. See Bata v. Central-Penn National Bank of Philadelphia, 448 Pa. 355, 373, 293 A.2d 343, 353 (1972); Commonwealth v. Davenport, 462 Pa. 543, 559, n. 3, 342 A.2d 67, 75 n. 3 (1975); Commonwealth v. Silver-man, 442 Pa. 211, 218, n. 8, 275 A.2d 308, 312, n. 8 (1971); compare Commonwealth v. Scott, 279 Pa.Super. 8, 11, 420 A.2d 717, 719 (1980). In an opinion filed just two months after Bass was decided, Justice Roberts did cite to Bass while dissenting from the full court’s determination, in which five justices joined, refusing to overturn a trial court decision to permit a case to proceed to trial in the absence of the defendant and its counsel. Dublin Sportswear v. *464Charlett, 485 Pa. 633, 403 A.2d 568 (1979). (Roberts, J., dissenting, 485 Pa. at 640, 403 A.2d 568 at 572.) The Bass case was cited in Commonwealth v. Revtai, 516 Pa. 53, 532 A.2d 1 (1987) (Opinion by McDermott, J.) for the traditional proposition of breakdown in the normal operation of the courts. The Revtai case did not involve an appeal nunc pro tunc, but rather the proper application of Pa.R.Crim.P. 130(d).
Thirdly, I agree with this court’s earlier assertion, if only by way of footnote, that Dorney Park, supra, eliminated the problems in determining the scope of Bass, with its special exception for non-negligent failure to file an appeal. In re Adoption of J.A.S., 330 Pa.Super. 151, 152, n. 1, 479 A.2d 8, 9 n. 1 (1984). While the majority refers to this court’s treatment of Bass as being “quite restrictive,” the fact of the matter is that this court has yet to apply the unique holding in Bass in permitting any appeal nunc pro tunc.
Where the Supreme Court has not revisited the plurality opinion in Bass since 1979, and where this court has never relied upon Bass in allowing appeals nunc pro tunc, I would decline to find, as does the majority, that Bass retains vitality.
I have difficulty in understanding the majority’s assertion that “numerous decisions of both this and the Commonwealth Court have continued to treat Bass as a viable part of our law.” Majority Opinion, page 454. None of the three cases cited for this proposition found on behalf of the appellant. In Commonwealth v. Smith, 348 Pa.Super. 10, 501 A.2d 273 (1985), our court quoted with approval from Justice Roberts’ dissent in Bass and affirmed the order denying a petition for permission to appeal nunc pro tunc. In Moring v. Dunne, 342 Pa.Super. 414, 493 A.2d 89 (1985), this court quashed an appeal which had been granted nunc pro tunc, finding negligent conduct in the face of the death of appellant’s counsel. Also in Moring, this court collected cases which had refused to follow Bass. Finally, in Guat Gnoh Ho v. Unemployment Compensation Board, 106 Pa.Commw. 154, 525 A.2d 874 (1987), Judge Palladino af*465firmed for a unanimous Commonwealth Court panel a decision of the Board of Review dismissing a request for an untimely hearing.
Only if making reference to a case can provide vitality might it be said that Bass continues as a viable part of our law. It is for this reason, in part, that I feel compelled to distance myself from the majority’s analysis of Bass. I find little difference on the facts between the conduct of the attorney in Bass and the conduct of the attorney in the case now before us. I am unable to distinguish between the lawyer in Bass having failed to make adequate arrangements to check the work of his secretarial staff and the failure of the attorney here involved to make “special arrangements to insure that his professional obligations would continue to be fulfilled.”
Justice Roberts anticipated this case in his dissent in Bass, when he argued:
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? Will not today’s result create a new and unnecessary layer of delay, mandating a special inquiry whenever an appeal is untimely filed? An effective appellate judicial adversary system cannot function as a tribunal of equal justice under law when it excuses negligent noncompliance with the law on an ad hoc basis. Who is to know, therefore, whether today’s newly created majority rule will be available to all litigants or whether its application is for today’s appellant-litigant alone, “a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only?” Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649, 669, 64 S.Ct. 757, 768, 88 L.Ed. 987, 1000 (1944). Does not the failure *466to enforce the timeliness requirements constitute an invitation to litigants to disregard the timeliness requirements and thus adversely affect the evenhanded administration of justice?
485 Pa. at 262, 401 A.2d at 1136-37.
I cannot help but align myself with my distinguished colleague, the Honorable Abraham H. Lipez, since retired, who looked at Bass in Gallardy v. Ashcraft, 288 Pa.Super. 37, 430 A.2d 1201 (1981) and remarked:
8. In State Farm Mut. Auto Ins. Co. v. Schultz, supra, note 3, [281] Pa.Super. [212] at [218], n. 7, 421 A.2d 1224, 1227, n. 7 (1980), the Bass case was distinguished on the ground that there was no indication on the record that the failure to file a timely appeal resulted from non-negligent happenstance. Here, too, there is no indication of non-negligent happenstance, but that might not suffice to distinguish this case, as it did Schultz, which involved the timeliness of an appeal to this court. Here the question is timeliness of the appeal to the court below, which applied the Bass “non-negligence” standard to facts arguably involving negligence. It is difficult to fault the court below for doing this, since the Bass majority applied its “non-negligence” standard to a set of facts which plainly seemed to involve negligence under any traditional meaning of the term. The confusion is compounded by the lack of any standard procedure in making a “non-negligence” determination, as well as the lack of a standard of review where, as here, we review the lower court’s finding of “non-negligence,” rather than make our own determination as to the timeliness of an appeal to our court. We have managed to avoid these thorny problems in this case through our holding on nonretroactivity, a point we may raise ourselves, although not argued by appellant, because it involves the jurisdiction of the court below. See generally, Commonwealth v. Boerner, [281] Pa.Super. [505], [515], n. 11, 422 A.2d 583, 588-89, n. 11 (1980). Unless the Supreme Court soon clarifies the effect of Bass, however, it will not be long before it is causing just the kind of chaos predicted by Justice Rob*467erts in his dissenting opinion and opinion dissenting from the denial of reargument.
Gallardy, 288 Pa.Super. at 43, n. 8, 430 A.2d at 1204, n. 8.
I agree with my colleagues that this case involves attorney neglect. This being true, I believe it to be the better course to avoid further review of Bass v. Commonwealth, and leave to our Supreme Court the task of placing that decision in its proper perspective.
Moreover, the cases cited by appellant in an attempt to secure what my colleagues term “equitable” relief involve attempts to open or vacate a judgment in the trial court and are clearly inapposite on this appeal where the only issue is the right to appeal nunc pro tunc. I therefore would decline to analyze those cases for the purpose of finding an “unnecessary distinction” between what is clearly before us and what is not a part of this appeal.
Because the appellant has not shown either fraud or some breakdown in the trial court’s operation, the trial court’s order denying appellant’s petition to appeal nunc pro tunc should be affirmed. I therefore join in the result reached by my colleagues.