Court Opinion

ID: 9752897
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:42:47.110161+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:25.000107
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
dissenting.
I am constrained to dissent to the majority’s use of statutory construction principles in order to abrogate the common law rule that a person reaches a given age on the day preceding his or her birthdate. In re Stout, 521 Pa. 571, 559 A.2d 489 (1989). The Juvenile Act defines a child *503as an “individual who is under the age of 18 years.” 42 Pa.C.S. § 6302(1). Under the common law rule, the child thus reaches the age of 18 years the day before his or her birthdate.
The majority acknowledges that the statute is silent with respect to the method of computing the age of an individual. Rather than acknowledge the obvious, that the legislature is fully cognizant of the common law method of computing the age of an individual and is content to leave the statute silent in deference to the common law, the majority embarks on an expedition of statutory construction to ascertain the intent of the legislature. ‘Me thinks’ the majority is tired of the common law and seeks to abrogate it by whim.
Until this Court started tampering with it, the law was well settled that the common law could not be abrogated without an express repeal by the legislature. For various reasons, the majority presumes the intent of the legislature to abrogate the common law as a remedial step to safeguarding criminally inclined children from the wrath of the law as applied to adults.
“A change from the common law cannot be presumed; it must appear to have been meant, or it will be held not to have been made.” Central Lithograph Company v. Eatmor Chocolate Company (No. 1), 316 Pa. 300, 175 A. 697 (1934), and cases cited therein.
“... statutes are not presumed to make any alteration in the common law farther or otherwise than the act expressly declares; therefore, in all general matters, the law presumed the act did not intend to make any alteration, for if the legislature had had that design they would have expressed it in the act.”
Locust-Broad, (No. 1) — Eighth Subway Case, 319 Pa. 161, 179 A. 741 (1935). Until today, this was good law. I now cannot vouch for the stability of the common law in this Commonwealth any longer. Therefore, I dissent.