Court Opinion

ID: 9707443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:11:50.736219+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:32.880225
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice CASTILLE,
concurring.
I join the Majority Opinion. I write simply to address the waiver question Mr. Justice Saylor notes and to explain why I think it is appropriate to reach the merits here; and I also write to make two points of elaboration concerning the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act, 40 P.S. §§ 1303.101-1303.1115.
As Justice Saylor correctly observes in his Concurring Opinion, until appellee rested his case, appellants never once objected to Dr. Blum’s qualifications to give testimony on the applicable standard of care. Appellants did not move in limine to preclude Dr. Blum’s testimony on the basis of the same board/subspecialty requirements of the MCARE Act, despite the fact that it was clear from Dr. Blum’s cumculwm vitae — forwarded months before trial — that he was a medical oncologist, and not a radiation oncologist, surgeon or otolaryngologist.
Similarly, during voir dire on his expert qualifications, appellants made no objection to appellee’s offer of Dr. Blum as an expert witness on the standard of care, despite appellants’ confirmation through cross-examination that he was not an otolaryngologist, a head and neck surgeon or a radiation oncologist. If appellants had objected at this early stage in the proceedings, the trial court would have had an opportunity to rule on the issue and appellee would have had the opportunity to attempt to cure any perceived defect under the MCARE Act construct. Instead, appellants waited until ap*397pellee rested his case to make a motion for nonsuit based in large part on Dr. Blum’s failure to qualify as an' expert under the strictures of the MCARE Act. There is obvious force in Justice Saylor’s view that appellants waived their challenge by not raising it at the appropriate opportunity. Concurring Op. at 400, 989 A.2d at 1289. Nonetheless, I am satisfied to reach and decide the merits of this appeal.
Competing waiver arguments have been forwarded here: i.e., appellee argues that appellants objected too late to Dr. Blum’s qualifications, and appellants argue that appellee himself waited too late, until post-trial motions, to object that their successful argument in securing a nonsuit was untimely. The parties’ respective arguments on waiver were presented to the Superior Court, but the panel’s disposition of those arguments was quite perplexing. I set it forth in its entirety here:
We acknowledge Plaintiffs argument that the defendants waived any objection to Dr. Blum’s qualifications because they did not lodge an objection until the day after his testimony, during the argument on their motion for nonsuit. Indeed, any objections to Dr. Blum’s qualifications could have been raised, at the earliest, in a pretrial motion in limine following receipt of his curriculum vitae and expert report or, at the very least, following voir dire on his qualifications. On the other hand, the defendants argue that Plaintiff waived his waiver argument because he failed to raise it during argument on the motion for nonsuit. Although we do not condone the defendants’ untimely objection to Dr. Blum’s qualifications and find Plaintiffs waiver argument persuasive, because we have determined that Dr. Blum was indeed qualified to render his opinion, we decline to engage in an analysis of the parties’ competing waiver arguments.
Vicari v. Spiegel, 936 A.2d 503, 512 n. 10 (Pa.Super.2007) (emphases added). The panel, in contradictory fashion, purported both to find that appellants’ objection to Dr. Blum’s qualifications was untimely and not to pass upon that very waiver. Failure to pass upon the argument would be error, *398since appellants had prevailed at trial. To avoid confusion, I would construe the panel’s footnote disposition as: (1) effectively rejecting the current appellants’ waiver argument (for otherwise the panel could not properly proceed to its merits reversal); and (2) declining to pass upon the current appellee’s waiver argument (which was an alternative argument) because the panel, for unexplained reasons, preferred a merits disposition, which was in appellee’s favor and was more useful, on retrial, than prevailing on a default argument.
For purposes of our review here, I am satisfied that the Superior Court’s unclear waiver disposition, and the parties’ renewal of their respective arguments on waiver in this Court, should be of no moment. In petitioning this Court for discretionary review, appellants did not pursue their waiver argument, nor did they argue that the Superior Court erred in its confused disposition of the argument, and we granted review limited to appellants’ substantive MCARE Act claim.
The necessity to consider appellee’s waiver argument is a closer question. Arguably, as the party prevailing below, appellee is free to raise properly preserved alternative arguments, and the Court is then free to determine which arguments to discuss (or to determine to dismiss the appeal on prudential grounds). See generally, Thomas G. Saylor, Right for Any Reason: An Unsettled DoctHne at the Supreme Court Level and an Anecdotal Experience ivith Former Chief Justice Cappy, 47 Duq.L.Rev. 489, 490, 494 (2009) (discussing countervailing arguments regarding Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s authority to “sustain a valid judgment or order of a trial or lower appellate court for any valid reason appearing as of record,” in order “to effectuate substantial justice”). See also Commonwealth v. Edwards, 588 Pa. 151, 903 A.2d 1139, 1157-59 (2006) (on direct appeal, affirming trial court’s admission of evidence on alternative grounds not “proffered by the Commonwealth or the trial court”); Commonwealth v. Sholcosky, 553 Pa. 466, 719 A.2d 1039, 1047 (1998) (Saylor, J., dissenting) (dissenting from plurality decision in part because “an appellate court may sustain a correct judgment based upon any valid reason that is supported by the record”). But *399even this proposition is not entirely clear here, because appellee did not prevail on any theory at the trial level. Nor is it entirely clear that he prevailed on his waiver argument before the Superior Court.
In these circumstances, I believe the Majority’s decision to decline to reach either waiver argument is sound. We need not reach appellants’ waiver argument because it simply is not encompassed in our grant of review.1 And we need not reach appellee’s waiver argument because it is not entirely clear that it is properly before us. Even if it were deemed available, passing upon it involves discretionary prudential concerns and, *400in this case, the fact that a merits decision was rendered in a published decision below, that we specifically accepted merits review, that the merits have been briefed, and that the issue is of statewide import, all counsel in favor of the merits review the Majority undertakes.
On the merits, I offer the following two observations. First, as the Majority states, appellee’s evidence amply established that as a medical oncologist Dr. Blum was qualified under Section 512(e) of the MCARE Act to render an opinion on the standard of care applicable to cancer treatment in the decedent’s case. The MCARE Act obviously was designed to raise the bar for expert witness qualification in medical negligence cases. But the Act should not supplant common sense or the dictates of justice. Indeed, in my view, the Act cannot simply displace the trial court’s evidentiary gate-keeping role such that traditional jurisprudential rules regarding the admissibility of expert witness testimony, deriving from bedrock precepts involving relevance and the overall truth-determining process, no longer apply. See, e.g., Pa.R.E. 702 (witness qualified as expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training or education may testify in form of opinion); Miller v. Brass Rail Tavern, Inc., 541 Pa. 474, 664 A.2d 525, 528 (1995) (test to be applied when qualifying witness to testify as expert is whether witness has any reasonable pretension to specialized knowledge on subject under investigation).
Second, although the parties and the Majority do not focus upon the issue, this case reveals the pitfalls when the Legislature purports to dictate how the courts should determine evidentiary questions, which implicates trial concerns uniquely within the judicial realm. Section 512(e) states that the trial court “may” waive the MCARE Act’s same specialty and board certification requirements if the court determines that the expert qualifies under the multiple parameters the provision then lists. The statute does not say the court “must” admit such testimony, only that it “may.” The question then becomes by what standard should that power be exercised? The Majority here does not remand for the trial court to exercise the power so conferred; instead, we hold, as a matter *401of law, that there is only one permissible ruling: the expert qualifies and must be permitted to testify. Does this ruling square with the language of the statute, or would the import of the statute, if deemed controlling, require a remand and a possible contrary conclusion? For my part, the answer is not in the MCARE Act, but in principles of jurisprudence: absent some competing concern (e.g., cumulative testimony) where an expert so qualifies, not only would it be an abuse of discretion, it would be plain error not to permit the testimony.
Justice BAER joins this opinion.

. Even if the waiver argument were deemed available to appellants, I would find it lacks merit. Appellants claim that appellee waited too long — until post-trial motions — to argue that appellants waived their challenge to Dr. Blum's qualifications. Ordinarily, if trial error is not raised by a litigant until post-trial filings, the claim is waived. See Pa.RX.P. No. 227.1(b)(1) (post-trial relief may not be granted unless "grounds therefor, ... if then available, were raised in pre-trial proceedings, or by motion, objection, point for charge, request for findings of fact or conclusions of law, offer of proof, or other appropriate method at trial”). And so, appellee’s argument on post-trial motions was untimely if it appears that appellee could, and should, have objected at trial that appellants’ challenge to Dr. Blum’s qualifications under the MCARE Act, raised at the nonsuit stage, was untimely. But I would hold that appellee was not obliged to raise this claim earlier. I believe that the belated timing of appellants’ objection must be considered in assessing appellee’s issue preservation obligations at the nonsuit stage. Obviously, the appropriate response to appellants’ motion for nonsuit would have been an immediate, contemporaneous argument before the trial court that appellants lost their chance to object to Dr. Blum's qualifications when they failed to object during voir dire or during Dr. Blum’s testimony (if not earlier during motions in limine). But, I would not require such foresight by a party under circumstances like those present here. As noted, appellants obviously could and should have raised the expert qualification-based challenge that, once accepted by the trial court, eviscerated appellee’s entire case, during voir dire of appellee's expert — but they did not, which suggests that the timing here was not just belated, but strategic. The modern view of law does not favor trial by surprise or ambush; and finding a waiver here by appellee would invite, if not reward, such tactics. At a minimum, a party that would seek to prevail based upon such a tactic should make certain that its own position has been properly preserved; and appellants have not done that here. In my judgment, in these circumstances, appellee's post-trial motion may properly be viewed as the first appropriate opportunity after he was actually aggrieved where he was obliged to preserve his argument about appellants’ late MCARE Act-based objection and resulting waiver.