Court Opinion

ID: 9704205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:26:47.786869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:58.522150
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING OPINION BY
TODD, J.:
¶ 1 I concur in the result reached by the Majority as I agree, in this civil case, that we are bound by our Supreme Court’s precedent interpreting the Shield Law, and therefore that the order of the trial court requiring Appellants to divulge their source for the January 12, 2004 articles must be reversed. See In re Taylor, 412 Pa. 32, 193 A.2d 181 (1963); Hatchard v. Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, 516 Pa. 184, 532 A.2d 346 (1987); Commonwealth v. Bowden, 576 Pa. 151, 838 A.2d 740 (2003). However, for the reasons discussed below, I would leave open the possibility that there may be circumstances under which the Shield Law might have to yield.
¶ 2 The trial judge, the Honorable Robert A. Mazzoni, has, in a very thoughtful and scholarly fashion, analyzed the competing interests asserted in this case: preservation of grand jury secrecy versus the public policy behind the Shield Law. The trial court, “intending] to afford pri*656ority to the disclosure of a source where the suggested criminal activity involves the intended confidential operation of the grand jury system” (Trial Court Opinion, 6/3/05, at 30), concluded that the Shield Law should be pierced under the circumstances of this case. I find, however, that this conclusion cannot be sustained in view of Taylor, supra, wherein our Supreme Court held that the predecessor statute to the Shield Law4
must therefore, we repeat, be liberally and broadly construed in order to carry out the clear objective and intent of the Legislature which has placed the gathering and the protection of the source of news as of greater importance to the public interest and of more value to the public welfare than the disclosure of the alleged crime or the alleged criminal.
In re Taylor, 193 A.2d at 185-86 (emphasis original and footnote omitted).5
¶ 3 Arguably, the facts presented in the instant case are different from those contemplated in Taylor in that, instead of simply providing supplementary evidence about a crime, the journalists herein may be an integral part of, and perhaps the sole witnesses to, a crime. Nevertheless, this is a defamation action, and Appellees seek the identity of Appellants’ confidential source in that context. Critically, Ap-pellees are not seeking this disclosure because it may evidence a breach of grand jury secrecy; that is, whether such a crime has occurred is of no moment to Appellees’ defamation action — it is coincidental. (Indeed, for this same reason, this litigation is a poor forum for assessing the competing interests raised, as Appellees’ interest in the integrity of the grand jury proceedings is tangential at best.)
¶ 4 Further, despite the trial court’s eloquent and proper concern for the sanctity of the grand jury process and its equally proper concern that “[ajllowing the grand jury proceedings to be published without appropriate consequences and/or remedies serves only to pervert the grand jury process” (Trial Court Opinion, 6/3/05, at 28-30), the disclosure ordered in this lawsuit will not provide any such consequence or remedy. The public interest in grand jury secrecy will be vindicated only indirectly.
¶ 5 However, I would not foreclose the possibility, as does the Majority, that in a future ease — for example where, in a criminal prosecution of a grand jury leak, a reporter’s evidence about the source of that leak is sought — the Shield Law may have to yield. In such a prosecution, we might have sufficient assurance that a disclosure otherwise protected by the Shield Law was sought precisely because of its relevance to the investigation and punishment of a grand jury leak. Indeed, I believe only in such a case, where the interest of the state and the public in the disclosure is at its zenith, can we consider creating an exception to what is, on its face, an unambiguous Shield Law.

. The predecessor statute contained, in relevant part, substantially similar language to the Shield Law.

. While not disturbing those conclusions of Taylor relevant herein, our Supreme Court has subsequently narrowed its holding in Taylor, finding that it should be construed as applying only to confidential sources or documentary materials identifying sources. See Hatchard, 532 A.2d at 351 ("We therefore conclude that, to the extent that language in In re Taylor may be read as interpreting the Shield Law to protect from discovery, in defamation actions, documentary material that could not reasonably lead to the discovery of the identity of a confidential media-informant, that decision interpreted the Shield Law much too broadly.”)