Court Opinion

ID: 9644699
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:02:18.820056+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:16.617770
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Cohen:
As recently as Zubrod v. Kuhn, 357 Pa. 200, 53 A. 2d 604 (1947) we held that the record of a defendant’s conviction of criminal assault and battery was inadmissible in an action to recover civil damages for the same assault and battery. Today the majority holds that a conviction of a defendant in a federal criminal court for a violation of the federal anti-racketeering law, including extortion, as federally defined, is conclusive proof of plaintiff’s right to recover from the defendant in a state unjust enrichment action.
The majority relies on Pennsylvania Turnpike Comm. v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 412 *502Pa. 222, 194 A. 2d 423 (1963). First, we there established, at great length, that the conduct for which the public official had been criminally convicted was precisely the same conduct which, by contract, made his bondsman civilly liable to the Commonwealth. In fact, we were of the opinion that the criminal conviction itself was tantamount to a breach of the bond. Here we are left to speculate on the correlation of the precise facts supporting the federal offense and the precise facts necessary to prove the plaintiff’s alleged civil action. Second, in Pennsylvania Turnpike we found that the identical questions involved in the civil case had been “exhaustively and conclusively litigated” in the criminal case and that the questions were thoroughly explored in a long and well conducted trial when “detailed evidence was adduced.” Here, the majority merely states that defendant had “more than ample opportunity to overcome the charges lodged” and then asserts that it is “incredible in such a situation that a defendant would present less than his best defense, knowing that his failure would result in loss of substantial property, or even his liberty.”
Third, in Pennsylvania Turnpike, before we allowed the criminal conviction to be conclusive proof of the facts therein established — which is another way of saying that the doctrine of collateral estoppel applied —we found that there was a substantial identity of parties. This, of course, is a prerequisite to collateral estoppel. Helmig v. Rockwell Manufacturing Company, 389 Pa. 21, 131 A. 2d 622 (1957). The Commonwealth was the plaintiff-prosecutor in the criminal case and the Turnpike Commission was the plaintiff in the civil case. We said “[t]he commission is an instrumentality of the Commonwealth.” Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission case, supra, at 229. While Torrance was the defendant in the criminal case and his surety the defendant in the civil case, we held that “[t]he surety *503is bound by the determination of the principal’s liability.” Id. at 228-9. But by no stretch of the imagination can the plaintiff in this civil case be likened unto the federal government for purposes of the identity of parties rule in the application of collateral estoppel. Therefore, the criminal conviction cannot be conclusive proof of plaintiff’s right to recover in this case.
Finally, the majority would distinguish records of conviction in “minor matters” only on the supposition that “expediency and convenience, rather than guilt, often control the defendant’s Trial technique’ ” and that “in such cases, it is not obvious that the defendant has taken advantage of his day in court, and it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to say he waived that right as to a matter (civil liability) which was probably not within contemplation at the time of the conviction.” I doubt the propriety of this conjectured distinction as much as I do the application of collateral estoppel doctrine on the conjecture that it is unbelievable that defendant will not try in a “serious” criminal case. Also, I doubt that the distinction between “major” and “minor” matters can be well drawn by courts in this area of vital importance to the litigants.
For these reasons I dissent.