Court Opinion

ID: 9639207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:08:15.214354+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:14.029775
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring.
I join the majority but write separately to express my deep concern for the cavalier manner in which lawyers, trial courts, and even appellate courts, have come to regard our Rules of Civil Procedure. More and more, the Rules are being ignored or violated in a laissez-faire attitude of “so-what-ism.”
Rule 2252 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure, titled, Right to Join Additional Defendants, was adopted by this Court on February 14, 1939, made effective on September 4, 1939, and has been amended as of December 30, 1942, September 4, 1958, July 21, 1961, June 27, 1969, and January 23, 1975. In pertinent part it provides at (a):
In any action the defendant or any additional defendant may, as the joining party, join as an additional defendant any person whether or not a party to the action who may be alone liable or liable over to him on the cause of action declared upon by the plaintiff or jointly or severally liable thereon with him, or who may be liable to the joining party on any cause of action which he may have against the joined party arising out of the transaction or occurrence of series of transactions or occurrences upon which plaintiffs cause of action is based. Pa.R.C.P. § 2252(a), (Emphasis added).
Plaintiffs, James E. Hoare and Ruth Hoare, his wife, commenced an action in trespass 1 against original defendants, Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania and Monarch Furniture Company, a corporation t/d/b/a Slumber City. Thereafter, Plaintiffs Hoare filed a “Motion to Add Milton Kotler as an Additional Defendant Pursuant to Pa.R.C.P. § 2252” (emphasis added).
*62Sadly, no one has seen fit to object or point out that plaintiffs cannot join anyone as additional defendants. This method of joinder is reserved exclusively for original defendants and additional defendants. A plaintiff can no more join someone as an additional defendant than a plaintiff can commence a civil action by filing an “information” against a civil defendant. Such adherence to our Rules of Civil Procedure is not exalting form over substance, rather it guarantees uniformity of practice before all the Courts of the Commonwealth and the assurance that all parties are similarly dealt with by our legal system. As the jurisdiction of the Court can only be invoked through prescribed manners, not through agreement of counsel or the forbearance of the parties or the Court, so too parties can only be joined under well recognized rules of procedure.
Plaintiffs could have commenced a new action against Milton Kotler and sought consolidation, or they could have proceeded under the Joinder of Parties Rules, Pa.R.C.P. 2226, et seq. Although the majority points out that, “The Hoares then filed a motion to add Milton Kotler as an additional defendant ...” (Page 1113), the majority then properly states the issue as “... whether a plaintiff may add an additional person as a defendant ...” (Page 1113) and opines on “The effect of the joinder of Kotler as another defendant ...” (emphasis added; Page 1113). Perhaps the majority condones this sloppy procedure to satisfy the needs of judicial economy since the result would remain the same — dismissal of the claim against Kotler.
I would have preferred that the plaintiffs’ “Motion to add Milton Kotler as an Additional Defendant Pursuant to Pa.R. C.P. 2252” had been quashed by the trial court on motion of defendants’ counsel. Since that was overlooked or ignored by the parties and courts below, and I have now made my point, I concur in the result reached by our Court.

. Actions in Trespass are now to be known as "civil actions” per Pa.R.C.P. 1001(b)(1), amended December 16, 1983, effective July 1, 1984.