Court Opinion

ID: 9710346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:07:45.218067+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:56.076124
License: Public Domain

*605SAYLOR, Justice,
dissenting.
In this appeal, the majority adopts a reasonable, plain-meaning construction of Pennsylvania Rule of Appellate Procedure 341(b)(2) as it relates to the Declaratory Judgments Act, and its reasoning appears to follow from the Court’s prior decision in General Accident Ins. Co. of Am. v. Allen, 547 Pa. 693, 706-07, 692 A.2d 1089, 1095 (1997). Nevertheless, since the opinion ultimately rests upon an interpretation of the intention of the General Assembly, I am troubled by the absence of any express indication within the Declaratory Judgments Act to the effect that the Legislature wished to alter the usual rules of appealability in the context of declaratory judgment proceedings, as has been included within other enactments when the purpose is as such. See, e.g., 42 Pa.C.S. § 7320 (providing explicitly that appeals may be taken from various interlocutory orders, such as an order denying an application to compel arbitration). Moreover, the primary and direct purpose of the Declaratory Judgments Act, a version of the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act, was to authorize courts to grant declaratory relief in the face of objections that such relief represented the giving of advisory opinions rather than the adjudication of controversies. See generally Petition of Ranker, 284 Pa. 455, 463, 131 A. 265, 268 (1925). As the language of Section 7532 pertaining to the finality of “the declaration” is essential to this central purpose, I would read such language as aligning declaratory judgment jurisprudence with that which applies to civil actions generally, rather than as creating a separate and unique scheme for the appeal of otherwise interlocutory orders in declaratory judgment proceedings.