Court Opinion

ID: 9737109
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:16:21.536197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:56.584612
License: Public Domain

OLSZEWSKI, Judge,
concurring:
I concur with Judge Cavanaugh’s learned and comprehensive disposition of the issues raised by appellant. I write separately in order to further clarify the proper disposition of the count of misapplication of entrusted funds and the count of attempted theft of the performance bond.
It is argued that 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 4113 only applies to situations where the misapplication of funds violates a fiduciary or trust relationship. This construction of the statute would make the clause, “or property of the government or of a financial institution,” superfluous. If the key to the statute is the fiduciary status of the offender, then property of the government or of a financial institution which is entrusted to a fiduciary is clearly a subset of, and contained within, “property that has been entrusted to him as a fiduciary.” 18 Pa.C.S.A. § 4113(a). It is a fundamental principle of statutory construction that all elements of a statute are to be given meaning; to adopt the construction that the statute only applies to fiduciaries makes the rest of the subsection unnecessary. To prevent this, the statute must apply to three separate types of property: government property, financial institution property, as well as *573property entrusted to a fiduciary. An individual who misapplies any of these three types of property violates the statute.
It is also argued that affirming the conviction for violation of § 4113 herein is akin to convicting a person for the theft of a public assistance check. No one would dispute that once an individual properly receives a public assistance check, he is free to exercise his own judgment as to how to best spend the money to achieve its beneficial purpose. Such was not the case here; the majority correctly notes that Edwards was not free to spend the advance monies for items not listed in E & H’s application to ULDC. I submit the restrictions placed upon the advance would be more akin to a person using food stamps to purchase inappropriate items. Edwards could purchase items which fit the description in his application but could not treat the funds as his own. Appellant herein received these monies from the government as part of an agreement to apply them to the listed mobilization costs. When he chose to divert them to his own purposes, he violated his agreement with the ULDC and so misapplied the funds in violation of 18 Pa.C. S.A. § 4113.
I also wish to clarify Edwards’ conviction for attempted theft of the performance bond. The bond is the insurer’s promise to pay. “It is intangible personal property, the value of which, i.e., the insurer’s credit and reputation, the defendant attempted to steal.” (Appellee’s Brief at 41). It is argued that because Edwards was not successful in securing the bond he did not make a substantial step toward theft of the value of the bond by deception. I cannot agree.
The majority recognizes that the value of the promise is the insurer’s credit and reputation. It is that value, not the paper bond, which Edwards attempted to secure by deception. While it is technically correct to state that no performance bond ever existed, its value, the credit and reputation, did exist. The mere fact that this property is intangible does not prevent an attempted theft thereof.
*574Under the reasoning advanced by appellant, an attempt at theft by deception, where payment by the victim was to be made by check, would not violate the statute as long as the victim did not write out the check. A check is a promise to pay, backed by the drawer’s credit. The fact that the check is not drawn does not negate the attempt to steal the credit which backs the check. So too, the fact that the bond was not issued does not negate Edwards’ attempt to steal the credit and reputation of the insurer which would have backed the bond.