Court Opinion

ID: 9755015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:21:12.225886+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:57:15.090045
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, President Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to the majority’s holding that the “of/on” analysis, established by our Supreme Court in Finn v. City of Philadelphia, 541 Pa. 596, 664 A.2d 1342 (1995), continues to apply to the real property exception to Sovereign Immunity, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8522(b)(4).
In Finn, the plaintiff sustained injuries when she fell on an accumulation of grease on a Philadelphia sidewalk. As part of its discussion of the sidewalk exception, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(b)(7), the Supreme Court concluded that, in order for a claim to fit within either the sidewalk exception or the real property exception to governmental immunity, 42 Pa.C.S. § 8542(b)(3), a plaintiff must establish that he or she was injured by a defect of the real property itself, rather than a defect on the realty. The Supreme Court reasoned:
The common theme of all these cases is that liability depends, first, on the legal determination that an injury was caused by a condition of government realty itself, deriving, originating from, or having the realty as its source, and, only then, the factual determination that the condition was dangerous.
What is necessary, therefore, to pierce the Commonwealth agency’s immunity is proof of a defect of the [real property] itself. Such proof might include an improperly designed sidewalk, an improperly constructed sidewalk, or a badly maintained, deteriorating, crumbling sidewalk.
Finn, 541 Pa. at 605, 664 A.2d at 1346. See also Kiley by Kiley v. City of Philadelphia, 537 Pa. 502, 645 A.2d 184 (1994).
While Finn was decided under governmental immunity law, the same analysis had been employed by the Supreme Court in sovereign immunity cases. Snyder v. Harmon, 522 Pa. 424, 562 A.2d 307 (1989).
However, since Finn was decided, the Supreme Court has rejected the on/of analysis in two cases, Grieff v. Reisinger, 548 Pa. 13, 693 A.2d 195 (1997), and Kilgore v. City of Philadelphia, 553 Pa. 22, 717 A.2d 514 (1998), both of which involved the real estate exception to governmental immunity. In my view, Kilgore controls the outcome of the instant case.
In Kilgore, the plaintiff was injured at the Philadelphia Airport when he was struck by a motorized “tug,” which went out of control as a result of an accumulation of ice and snow on the Airport’s property. The Supreme Court, without discussing or even recognizing the on/of analysis articulated in Finn, determined that the claim fell within the real property exception to government immunity:
[T]he Kilgores claim damages for injuries caused by the negligence of the City in the manner in which it maintained its property. They claim that the City breached its obligation to remove snow *1275and ice from the roadway area. Under the facts as alleged, the Kilgores meet the two threshold conditions to bring an action under the Act since, under common law, they could recover if Mr. Kil-gore had fallen on private property, and it is alleged that the City’s active negligence was a direct cause of this accident. ... Additionally, it is alleged that the City’s failure to remove ice and snow following an earlier storm was related to the ‘care, custody and control of real property in possession of the local agency’ ... and was a direct cause of the accident....
Kilgore, 553 Pa. at 28, 717 A.2d at 517 (citations omitted).
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Castille argued that Finn barred the plaintiff’s claim, and he emphatically asserted that, by failing to acknowledge its prior decision in Finn, the Supreme Court has “sub si-lentio overruled it, and in so doing, has abandoned the principle of stare decisis.” Kilgore, 553 Pa. at 30, 717 A.2d at 518 (Castille, Justice, dissenting).
In the present case, I believe that this Court is obligated to follow the latest pronouncement of our Supreme Court indicating the state of the law in the area of immunity. Although Kilgore involved a governmental immunity issue and the present case involves the real estate excep-tión to sovereign immunity, I nonetheless conclude that Kilgore is both applicable and controlling, especially in light of the well-established principle that governmental and sovereign immunity statutes are to be read consistently, provided that such a reading does not ignore the plain language chosen by the General Assembly. Accordingly, based on Kilgore, I would conclude that this Court is constrained to reverse the Common Pleas Court’s order and remand this case for trial.1

. I recognize that this Court recently applied Finn in Osborne v. Cambridge Township, 736 A.2d 715 (Pa.Cmwlth.1999), which essentially holds that the on/of distinction continues to apply to exceptions to governmental immunity that contain the specific language providing that immunity is waived for a "dangerous condition of” the subject improvement. Since the real property exception to sovereign immunity contains this core language "dangerous condition of”, under Osborne, the on/of distinction would apply to this exception also. The Osborne Court noted that the real property exception to governmental immunity does not contain the core language, but rather states that immunity is waived for injuries caused by the "care, custody, or control” of real property and therefore explains away the Supreme Court’s decision to abandon the on/of distinction in Grieff and Kilgore. I disagree with this analysis and believe that Osborne has carved out an exception to the symmetry of the overall statutory scheme and has created a dichotomy between sovereign immunity and governmental immunity which was never intended by the Legislature nor by the Supreme Court in Grieff and Kilgore.
For the reasons stated in the body of this dissenting opinion, I believe that Osborne fails to properly consider the change in the law created by the Supreme Court in Grieff and Kilgore. Unless the Supreme Court reverses other established case law, Osborne violates the well-established rule that the exceptions to sovereign immunity and governmental immunity are to be interpreted consistently, again pointing out that the Supreme Court has specifically concluded that the real property exception to government immunity is to be construed in a manner that is consistent with the other exceptions to immunity. Kiley.