Court Opinion

ID: 9702907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:31:16.699727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:43.292122
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Woobside, J.:
I concur with the majority that the sum awarded the master in this divorce case was excessive for the *150reasons set forth in the majority opinion, but I am also moved to reduce the fee for an additional reason.
In my opinion the master, and to a lesser extent the attorneys for the parties, must bear the responsibility for an inordinately and unnecessarily long record. None of them, least of all the master, should profit by his failure to keep the case within reasonable judicial bounds. (The court stenographer, referred to in the dissent, bears no responsibility for the length of the record.)
The testimony covered 2011 pages — nearly twice as many pages as Gone With The Wind and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography combined; the master’s report contained 198 pages — more than the Bred Scott decision, Marbury v. Madison and the school segregation opinions of the United States Supreme Court combined; the master devoted to the case the equivalent of 12 weeks of 5 days each from 9 to 5 o’clock each day, with an hour for lunch and two afternoons (in the 12 weeks) for golf or other business.1
Becognizing that almost everything that either party does during their married life might conceivably be relevant in a divorce case, nevertheless, common sense, practical rules of administration, and even due process require some reasonable limitations on litigation. For the person seeking the fruits of legal action, endless litigation and no litigation are equally fruitless.
There is nothing to indicate that of all the divorce cases in this Commonwealth, this one was unique. If in those counties where judges hear contested divorce cases, a judge were to spend as much time on each case as the master did on this case, he would hear four a. year — providing he took no vacation.
*151In addition to considering the husband’s ability to pay and the time actually devoted to the case by the master, I think the court should impose a third test in setting a fee. It should limit the time for which fees are to be paid to that time which is reasonably necessary to determine the issue. I can conceive of no divorce case which cannot be fully heard and justly determined in a fraction of the time for which the master is seeking remuneration in this case.
Although I am inclined to consider a fee of $2500 to be sufficient, I recognize that the exact amount which should be allowed is a discretionary matter incapable of mathematical determination, and because the sum considered reasonable by a majority of my colleagues is so close to the above sum, I do not dissent from the award of $3000 allowed by this Court to the master.

 The record of another devoted master can be found in Daugherty v. Daugherty, 57 Dauphin 32, 33, 34 (1945).