Court Opinion

ID: 9715062
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:53:31.62506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:31.201370
License: Public Domain

KELLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent based on the dissent in Lajevic v. Department of Trans*1068portation, Bureau of Driver Licensing, 718 A.2d 371 (Pa.Cmwlth.1998). In Lajevic, the trial court accepted counsel’s explanation as credible that the appeal was filed late because he had become unexpectedly ill and was hospitalized and, thereafter, was confined to his home. This Court disregarded this credibility determination because the record did not contain any independent evidence to substantiate La-jevic’s counsel’s explanation that he was hospitalized with pneumonia and that he was incapacitated for a month. However, as pointed out by Judge Friedman in the dissent in Lajevic, there is no requirement that an appellant’s counsel produce medical records to verify an illness and there is no indication that medical records were produced in Bass v. Commonwealth, 485 Pa. 256, 401 A.2d 1133 (1979). The absence of such a requirement has not changed since this Court’s decision in La-jevic.
Herein, the trial court accepted, as credible, counsel’s explanation that his secretary, whose job it was to file the appeal, was ill and absent from the office on the day that she was to have filed the appeal. Notwithstanding this credibility determination, the majority in this case concludes that the present case is factually and legally indistinguishable from Lajevic and reverses the decision of the trial court. Therefore, despite counsel’s credible explanation to establish that the late filing of Smith’s appeal was due to non-negligent conduct, this Court ignores the fact that credibility is for the trial court to determine. However, it is precisely because the trial court is charged with making credibility determinations, the review of such which is outside this Court’s limited scope of review, that I would affirm the trial court’s order sustaining Smith’s appeal from the one-year suspension of her operating privilege.1

. I note that, as in Lajevic, the Bureau does not challenge the merits of the trial court’s decision wherein the trial court found that the certified documents introduced by the Bureau to meet its burden of proof with respect to Smith’s operating privilege suspension were so fatally flawed, the documents could not sustain the suspension.