Court Opinion

ID: 9763576
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:50:04.930107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:46.322826
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
Although I do not dispute the Majority’s choice of legal precepts or its interpretation of those precepts, I am unable to accede to the result reached in this case. I do not accept the Majority’s characterization of the record in the Court of Common Pleas as presenting a “clear finding” that the appellant did not refuse to take the test.
Because an opinion was not written in this case, the trial court’s announcement of its decision in open court constitutes the only indication of the reasons for the court’s order sustaining the appeal. In my view the majority errs by removing the court’s final statement from the context of the full conclusion. The court below stated
Commonwealth cases [sic] ruled recently that the request for an attorney in response for [sic] a request for a Breathalizer [sic] test is a refusal and would be treated as such. In this case we have a complicating factor in that he’s also being told at the same time that he has a right to an attorney. This could raise a sufficient element of confusion in a defendant’s mind, being told you’re to be suspended, but you have a right to a lawyer, and it’s reasonable for a defendant to ask for a lawyer rather *61than to accede to the request for taking a Breathalizer [sic] test. It can go either way when this case goes to Commonwealth Court. I will have to extend the benefit of doubt to say he didn’t refuse to take the Breathalizer [sic] test when he was asked to do so.
Notes of Testimony pp. 21-22. (Emphasis added).
The unanimous Commonwealth Court panel found on this record a “clear implication ... that the court found as a matter of fact that Korchak did refuse to take the breathalyzer test ... The court concluded as a matter of law, however, that Korchak’s request for an attorney did not constitute a knowing and conscious refusal.” Commonwealth v. Korchak, 74 Pa.Cmwlth. 465, 468, 459 A.2d 1295, 1297 (1983). (Emphasis in original). This conclusion is at least as tenable as the conclusion of the Majority1 and does not, as the Majority suggests, represent a subterfuge of the Commonwealth Court’s standard of review in appeals from license suspension cases. Indeed, I find in the trial court’s statement that “[i]t could go either way when this case goes to Commonwealth Court,” almost an abdication of the decision, as being a matter of law, to the. Commonwealth Court.
Because no opinion or separate statement of reasons for the order was filed by the court and because the reasons for. the order do not already appear of record, Pa.R.A.P. 1925(a), with sufficient clarity to permit proper analysis in this appeal, (demonstrated by the sharply divergent analyses of the Commonwealth Court and the Majority herein,) I would remand the case to the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County for further proceedings and explicit findings of fact and conclusions of law.

. The conclusion is further supported by statements made by the court during argument:
THE COURT: The facts aren’t in dispute. Several times he was requested to take it; and when the chips got down he said, "I want my lawyer." Are you saying he was misled?
THE COURT: He says, "Can I have my attorney?" He says, “I want my lawyer.” That is a refusal.
Notes of Testimony, p. 16. (Emphasis added).