Court Opinion

ID: 9647648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:43:51.375938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:51.595878
License: Public Domain

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Crumltsi-i, Jr. :
Conceived in the Dark Ages, born and bred in Toryism, flourishing for over two centuries by judicial servility to stare decisis and by legislative inertia and so recently interred,1 the “mystery of legal evolution” was resurrected and this Court today deprives Karen Brungard of her day in Court.
The Supreme Court, faced with a doctrine repugnant to the integrity of human nature and natural justice directly conflicting with the guarantees dictated by onr political founders in our constitution, at last reinforced our unalienable right and ended the reign of this erroneous medieval defense.
Pennsylvania citizens, “grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty,” had constitutionally bedrocked the “great and essential principles of liberty and free government” by declaring the inherent rights of mankind among which is remedy by due course of law in courts opened equally to all citizens for harm to person, reputation, lands or goods.
These guarantees assured the birthright of every man, woman and child to personal dignity and integrity free from unwarranted or careless assaults. These rights, explicit in natural law and eternally preserved in our declaration of rights, are inherent and indefeasible. Sadly, they are at times taken for grant*26ed but they are omnipresent and without them the pyramidal political structure of the New World democratic republic would collapse.
In chipping away these rights using the tool of unfounded dogma, heirs to the founders, like Karen Brungard, were effectively denied redress of wrongs. There is no foundation in American history, law, equity, reason or policy,2 in the concept of an immune sovereign yet, despite the absence of legislative direction, judicial fiat arbitrarily eliminated a forum for the redress of violated rights.
In Mayle, the defense was exposed as an archaic concept, unconstitutionally imposed by the judiciary. Mayle, in dissecting the doctrine, traces the rights inherent in the citizens to a situation where the rights reside with the state. The Court recognized that the right to obtain legal redress from the state existed from the creation of the Commonwealth. The right never erased was compromised by judicial interposition of a mythical defense. Mayle, recognizing the continuity of the shrouded right, abolished sovereign immunity as a defense and called for a legislative action speaking for the citizens of this Commonwealth to legitimize this defense.
Following Mayle, the legislature promptly responded by formalizing the doctrine of sovereign immunity and providing limited waivers, Act of September 28, 1978, P.L. 788, Act No. 152-1978 (Act 152), amending the Judicial Code, 42 Pa. C.S. §§5510, 5511. My suppressed dissatisfaction with the scope of the waivers and my disagreement with the use of the concept is well known. I do, however, recognize that the judiciary may not substitute its social and economic beliefs for those of the legislature, whose function it is *27to enact laws and that it may, in its wisdom, provide the defense of sovereign immunity. However, resurrection of the doctrine is not superior to the limitations imposed by the Federal and the Commonwealth Constitutions. The legislature’s invalid attempt to do so by effectuating its directive retroactively and this Court’s majority’s willingness to afford Act 152 retroactive application prompts my dissent.
The judiciary stands guard against attacks on constitutional principles. It is in our inherent power and duty to determine the constitutionality of the legislation in question and to strike down any part of a statute which violates the rights of Pennsylvania citizens. I am of the opinion that Section 5(b) (1) of Act 152 which purports to confer retroactive application is unconstitutional.
As an incident of the Mayle decision, the order of this Court dismissing Brungard’s complaint against Mansfield State College on the basis of sovereign immunity was vacated and the matter remanded for our consideration in light of the Supreme Court’s pronouncements in Mayle. The effect of the Supreme Court’s remand was to inform Brungard that at last her claim against the Commonwealth would be heard. Are we now to say that Brungard’s right is again thwarted because the resurrected post-Mayle doctrine precedes this Court’s consideration?
The majority says the “crucial circumstance” in Brungard’s case is that the doctrine of sovereign immunity was in “full force and effect.” However, this “crucial circumstance” somehow overlooks Brungard’s right to access, absent legislative mandate, guaranteed by Article I, Section 11:
All courts shall be open; and every man for an injury done him in his lands, goods, person or reputation shall have remedy by due course *28of law, and right and justice administered without sale, denial or delay. Suits may be brought against the Commonwealth in such manner, in such courts and in such cases as the Legislature may by law direct.
It is true this right was decimated by a “wrongly espoused” defense, but undeniably the right existed. Brungard, recognizing her right, persistently pursued her cause to our State’s highest tribunal. In Mayle, that Court made it clear that no longer would the inviolable right be obscured by the defense called sovereign immunity. It is indisputably evident to me that the timing of the incident did not affect the right of redress, for otherwise, her complaint would have been dismissed out of hand. By its remand order, the Supreme Court recognized that the right to continue to pursue her cause of action, free of the archaic restraint, was an inviolable constitutionally guaranteed right absent legislative directive. The right to a cause of action is a vested property right, Commonwealth ex rel. Margiotti v. Cunningham, 337 Pa. 289, 10 A.2d 559 (1940), which is constitutionally protected against retroactive state action. Forbes Pioneer Boat Line v. Board of Commissioners, 258 U.S. 338 (1922).
The General Assembly, in attempting to apply Act 152 retroactively, expressed its intent in the Act to “assure the development of a consistent body of law, an orderly and uniform management of litigation and to . . . prevent inequities within the terms of this act. ...” These goals, while laudable and histrionic, need not and may not be accomplished by unconstitutional retroactive application.
At the risk of redundancy, I observe that in Article I, Section 11, access to our' courts for redress of injury is a principle and a goal of this Commonwealth. We may not allow the legislature to rectify two centuries of inaction by permitting restoration of sov*29ereign immunity retroactively, so that it divests property rights.
Accordingly, I would afford Act 152 prospective application only. Karen Brungard has pressed her claim for redress for nearly a decade. Following the instruction of Mayle, we cannot now deny her her day in Court.
My analysis leads me to no other conclusion hut to concur in the majority with respect to the complaint of Professor Hartman and dissent as to its resolution of the retroactivity provision of Act 152.

 Mayle v. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, 479 Pa. 384, 388 A.2d 709 (1978).

 Sloan, “Lessons in Constitutional Interpretation: Sovereign Immunity in Pennsylvania,” 82 Dick. L. Rev. 209 (1978).