Court Opinion

ID: 9728649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:13:15.629652+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:50.722653
License: Public Domain

PAPADAKOS, Justice,
concurring.
I join in the opinion of the majority but write separately to express my concern that a remand, as proposed, may be an exercise in futility in that we are remanding to an entity which we have already determined to be tainted in denying due process to the Appellant by commingling prosecutorial and adjudicative functions.
I do not perceive how this entity, the State Board of Medicine, can erase its participation in the prosecutorial function so as to comply with the majority mandate that the Appellant is entitled to a Board not involved in the prosecutorial function.
The majority, it seems to me, is acting in the blind by remanding to a Board whose present composition may be the same as the tainted Board which denied due process to the Appellant. We do not know what members have left the Board and been replaced by members who did not participate in any of the proceedings involving this Appellant. Unless the entire Board has been replaced, I feel that Appellant’s due process rights are still implicated.
Is the majority sending a signal that the Board should rewrite its regulations to provide for a separation of the functions and then reinstitute proceedings against the Appellant, ab initio, and to continue to do so until it gets the matter right? I certainly believe a rewrite of the regulations is in order but I am not so sure of the reinstitution of complaints after so much water has gone under the bridge.
I would normally be constrained to agree with the Dissent of former President Judge Crumlish, joined by Judge Colins, of the Commonwealth Court, filed at 127 Pa.Commonwealth Ct. 225, 561 A.2d 362 (1989), reversing the action of the Board and dismissing the charges against Appellant. *551But, it may be that these are matters better left to another day. The Board may act in such a manner that my concerns will be satisfied.