Court Opinion

ID: 9962597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-23 20:13:55.155654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:19:09.408705
License: Public Domain

J-A03025-24

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37

 JUDE A. BLOOM                          :    IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                        :         PENNSYLVANIA
              v.                        :
                                        :
 DEUTSCHE BANK NATIONAL TRUST           :
 COMPANY, AS TRUSTEE FOR NEW            :
 CENTURY HOME EQUITY LOAN               :
 TRUST SERIES 2003-3 ASSET              :
 BACKED PASS-THROUGH                    :
 CERTIFICATES                           :
                                        :
                   Appellant            :    No. 462 WDA 2023

             Appeal from the Judgment Entered June 22, 2023
     In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County Civil Division at
                          No(s): GD-20-011074

BEFORE: BOWES, J., KUNSELMAN, J., and MURRAY, J.

MEMORANDUM BY KUNSELMAN, J.:                FILED: April 23, 2024

     Following a non-jury trial in this quiet-title action, Deutsche Bank

National Trust Co., in its capacity as Trustee for New Century Home Equity

Loan Trust Series 2003-3 Asset Backed Pass-Through Certificates, (“Deutsche

Bank”) appeals from the judgment entered in favor of Jude Bloom. Because

Deutsche Bank flagrantly violated Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure

1925(b), we dismiss its appellate issues as waived and affirm.

     Our decision rests on procedural grounds; thus, we only briefly discuss

the underlying facts.   In 2003, Jude Bloom and her then-husband Aurthur

Bloom purchased a home in Pittsburgh for $340,000. Ms. Bloom made the

$61,000 downpayment on the property, while Mr. Bloom procured a loan for

the rest of the purchase price.   To obtain the $289,000 loan, Mr. Bloom
J-A03025-24

executed a mortgage with New Century Mortgage Corp., Deutsche Bank’s

predecessor in interest.

      The couple divorced in 2018, and Ms. Bloom became the sole owner of

the at-issue property. Two years later, she discovered that her name also

appeared on the mortgage that Mr. Bloom had executed.

      On October 10, 2020, Ms. Bloom sued Duetsche Bank for quiet title to

the property. Specifically, she sought equitable relief to declare the mortgage

void based on fraud. Duetsche Bank filed various counterclaims against her.

In August 2021, approximately five months after the pleadings closed, Mr.

Bloom died.

      The case proceeded to a bench trial, which consisted of three witnesses

and lasted two days. At the close of testimony, the trial court left the record

open, “while the parties considered whether additional documents . . . should

be included in the record.” Trial Court Opinion, 6/20/23, at 3. A few weeks

later, they jointly filed several exhibits regarding the mortgage. Only two of

those documents included the purported signatures of both Mr. and Ms.

Bloom.

      Based on the exhibits and Ms. Bloom’s credible testimony, the trial court

found that New Century Mortgage had fraudulently procured the mortgage.

Therefore, the court declared the mortgage void, extinguished any legal

interest Duetsche Bank had acquired in the property as New Century

Mortgage’s predecessor, and awarded Ms. Bloom quiet title. The trial court

also found that Deutsche Bank was not entitled to an equitable lien or

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subrogation. Therefore, the court dismissed Deutsche Bank’s counterclaims

as meritless.

       Duetsche Bank filed a motion for post-trial relief, which the trial court

denied. This appeal followed.

       The trial court directed Duetsche Bank to file a concise statement of

errors complained of on appeal, under Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b). Instead, Duetsche

Bank filed a seven-page document, raising over 30 issues.         See Deutsche

Bank’s Rule 1925(b) Statement at 2-8.

       Unsurprisingly, the trial court did not appreciate receiving a voluminous

Rule 1925(b) statement. It found the statement to be procedurally flawed

and, as a result, concluded that Duetsche Bank had waived all claims of error.1

The learned Judge Mary C. McGinley, writing for the Court of Common Pleas

of Allegheny County, correctly opined as follows:

                                WAIVER OF ISSUES

             Following receipt of the Notice of Appeal . . . a Rule 1925(b)
       order was entered on April 24, 2023. [Duetsche Bank] filed its
       Concise Statement of Errors Complained of on Appeal on May 12,
       2023 (“Concise Statement”). [Duetsche Bank] listed 36 separate
       errors in the Concise Statement that were denoted as a) through
       ff).

             The Concise Statement does not meet the requirements set
       forth by our appellate courts. The Superior Court has explained
       “that Rule 1925 is a crucial component of the appellate process
       because it allows the trial court to identify and focus on those

____________________________________________

1 “The issue of waiver presents a question of law, and, as such, our standard

of review is de novo, and our scope of review is plenary.” Trigg v. Children's
Hosp. of Pittsburgh of UPMC, 229 A.3d 260, 269 (Pa. 2020).

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       issues the parties plan to raise on appeal.” Kanter v. Epstein,
       866 A.2d 394, 400 (Pa. Super. 2004).

              Our law makes it clear that Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) is not
              satisfied by simply filing any statement.[2] Rather, the
              statement must be “concise” and coherent as to
              permit the trial court to understand the specific issues
              being raised on appeal. Specifically, this Court has
              held that when appellants raise an “outrageous”
              number of issues in their 1925(b) statement, the
              appellants have “deliberately circumvented the
              meaning and purpose of Rule 1925(b) and have
              thereby effectively precluded appellate review of the
              issues they now seek to raise.” Kanter, 866 A.2d at
              401. We have further noted that such “voluminous”
              statements do not identify the issues that appellants
              actually intend to raise on appeal because the briefing
              limitations contained in Pa.R.A.P. 2116(a) make the
              raising of so many issues impossible. Id. “Further,
              this type of extravagant 1925(b) statement makes it
              all but impossible for the trial court to provide a
              comprehensive analysis of the issues.” Jones v.
              Jones, 878 A.2d 86, 90 (Pa. Super. 2005).

       Tucker v. R.M. Tours, 939 A.2d 343, 346 (Pa. Super. 2007),
       aff'd, 977 A.2d 1170 (Pa. 2009). When one considers that
       testimony in this matter lasted only two days, raising 36 separate
       matters deviates widely from the requirement that the statement
       be concise.

____________________________________________

2 The Rule provides, in relevant part, “If the     judge entering the [appealed]
order . . . desires clarification of the errors complained of on appeal, the judge
may enter an order directing the appellant to file of record in the trial court
and serve on the judge a concise statement of the errors complained of on
appeal (‘Statement’).” Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b). “The Statement shall set forth
only those errors that the appellant intends to assert.”                 Pa.R.A.P.
1925(b)(4)(i) (emphasis added). “The Statement should not be redundant or
provide lengthy explanations as to any error. Where non-redundant, non-
frivolous issues are set forth in an appropriately concise manner, the number
of errors raised will not alone be grounds for finding waiver.” Pa.R.A.P.
1925(b)(4)(iv).

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           The [trial court] recognizes that a lengthy statement may
     not be the consequence of bad faith, a finding of which has been
     required to lead to the consequence of waiver. See, Eiser v.
     Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 938 A.2d 417, 421, 422
     (Pa. 2007) (“while the number of issues raised in the subject Rule
     1925(b) statement may have been the result of a poorly reasoned
     appellate strategy, because the trial court did not find that
     appellants acted in bad faith, there was no violation of a Rule of
     Appellate Procedure”) (reviewing 24 errors listed in the concise
     statement). However, the Supreme Court [of Pennsylvania has]
     distinguished Eiser from Kanter noting that the issues in Eiser
     were far more complicated than a simple breach of contract
     action. Id., at 421-422. This distinction has been followed in
     other cases where the Superior Court found that there was no
     waiver where there were complex issues, the trial court could
     address the general issues raised, and a voluminous 1925(b)
     statement was not the result of bad faith. See Maya v. Johnson
     & Johnson, 97 A.3d 1203, 1211 at footnote 4 (Pa. Super. 2014)
     (reviewing a statement of errors of 23 paragraphs) and Boehm
     v. Riversource Life Ins. Co., 117 A.3d 308, 319 at footnote 3
     (Pa. Super. 2015) (examining 36 separate claims of error in the
     Rule 1925(b) statement).

           The [trial court] submits that this matter, involving a one-
     count Complaint in an Action to Quiet Title and four-count
     Counterclaim, all of which likewise sounded in relief to quiet title
     does not involve the same complexity that caused the court in
     Eisen to deviate from the court’s rationale in Kanter. The
     numerosity of the complaints required the undersigned to expend
     considerable effort comparing each matter raised to what was
     actually raised in the context of trial and in post-trial motions,
     particularly since deviation existed.      Many of the matters
     complained of were redundant in violation of Pa.R.A.P.
     1925(b)(4)(iv). Parsing through the matters complained of had
     the effect of overwhelming the trial court. Consistent with
     Kanter, these violations should be deemed a waiver in the context
     of appellate review.

Trial Court Opinion, 6/20/23, at 4-6 (footnote and some punctuation omitted).

We adopt the above, well-reasoned analysis of the trial court as our own.

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       A party that files a 1925(b) Statement, brimming with over 30 points of

error after a two-day bench trial, does so either out of extreme ignorance of

the appellate process or as an act of deliberate disrespect for the trial court’s

time and finite judicial resources.            In either case, the party has no real

intention or hope of litigating that plethora of issues in an appellate court,

because of the word-count limits that our Rules of Appellate Procedure place

upon briefs. “A principal brief shall not exceed 14,000 words . . . .” Pa.R.A.P.

2135(a)(1).

       Indeed, Duetsche Bank reduced its merit issues on appeal from the 30+

raised in its 1925(b) Statement to six.3 Like the trial court, we conclude that
____________________________________________

3 Duetsche Bank’s six merit issues are:

       1.     Did the [Ms. Bloom] carry her burden of proving, by clear
              and convincing evidence, that her signature had been forged
              on the . . . mortgage . . . ?

       2.     Did the trial court abuse its discretion . . . by admitting into
              evidence . . . “propensity” evidence . . . ?

       3.     Did the trial court abuse its discretion . . . by holding that
              [Ms. Bloom’s] request for relief, delayed for 17 years, was
              not barred by the defense of laches?

       4.     Did the trial court abuse its discretion or err as a matter of
              law by holding that [Ms. Bloom’s] ratification of the
              mortgage in the U.S. bankruptcy court and in her divorce
              case is not a defense as a matter of law and is waived?

       5.     Did the trial court abuse its discretion or err as a matter of
              law by holding that [Duetsche Bank’s] counterclaims for
              imposition of an equitable mortgage or equitable lien are
              barred in fraud cases as a matter of law?
(Footnote Continued Next Page)

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Duetsche Bank packed its 1925(b) statement with over 30 claims of error

solely to exasperate the trial court and waste its time. Duetsche Bank was

uninterested in helping the trial court facilitate a meaningful appellate review

as to any of the issues in its 1925(b) statement. Rather, it raised redundant

and frivolous issues, which Duetsche Bank never planned to raise in this Court,

in deliberate violation of Rule 1925(b)(4)(iv).

       To discourage appellate counsel from filing needlessly voluminous Rule

1925(b) statements in future appeals, we impose the waiver result prescribed

in Kanter, supra.

       Duetsche Bank’s appellate issues dismissed as waived.

       Judgment affirmed.

       Judge Murray joins.

       Judge Bowes concurs in result.

____________________________________________

       6.     Did the trial court abuse its discretion . . . by holding that
              [Duetsche Bank’s] counterclaims . . . are barred by [the
              doctrine of] unclean hands?

Duetsche Bank’s Brief at 2-3.

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4/23/2024

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