Court Opinion

ID: 9767204
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:12:42.931835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:29.560337
License: Public Domain

CAVANAUGH, Judge,
concurring:
I agree that the order striking the judgment of non pros entered against appellee should be reversed and the judgment reinstated. Unlike the majority, however, I would not base the decision on a determination of whether the judgment was “void” or “voidable.” Instead, I would adopt the view of the Restatement (Second) of Judgments, as advocated by Judge Spaeth in his Concurring Opinion in Tice v. Nationwide Life Insurance Co., 284 Pa.Super. 220, 425 A.2d 782 (1982) (Tice II).1
*328Under the Restatement (Second), an invalid judgment, such as the one in the instant case, would be avoided not as an automatic consequence, but depending on the nature of the defect, the opportunity of the complaining party to challenge the defect, and on whether there has been reliance on the judgment. Restatement (Second) of Judgments, Ch. 2 at 19. Applying the Spaeth analysis to the present case where the motion to strike was not filed before the Gonzales opinion was filed and the judgment remains unsatisfied, the approach of the Restatement (Second) should be used “to determine whether it would be in the interests of justice to grant a motion to strike on the basis of Gonzales.” 284 Pa.Super. at 238, 425 A.2d at 792.
Under the present circumstances, I would conclude, as does the majority, that the judgment of non pros should not be stricken since appellee did not file his motion to strike until two years after Gonzales was filed and more than four years after entry of the judgment, and the appellants “have relied on this judgment which was entered only after repeated unsuccessful attempts at discovery.” (Majority opinion at 5). I would hold, therefore, that even though the judgment entered in this case is “invalid,” appellee should not be permitted to have it stricken at this late date.

. Tice II was heard by a seven member court en banc. The lead opinion had three votes, as did Judge Spaeth’s concurring opinion. The present writer dissented on a different ground and did not reach the issue herein. However, I later cited the Spaeth analysis with approval in Bethlehem Steel Corporation v. Tri-State Industries, 290 Pa.Super. 461, 434 A.2d 1236 (1981).