Court Opinion

ID: 9753440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:14:24.987325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:36.685972
License: Public Domain

*302Justice SAYLOR,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion, but would place the main focus on the sea change in federal due process law governing the constitutionality of enactments retroactively affecting contract and property rights, as manifested in Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 2882, 49 L.Ed.2d 752 (1976), and its progeny. See id. at 16-17, 96 S.Ct. at 2893 (explaining that such legislation is constitutional if it satisfies the rational-basis test). In the application of the now prevailing standard, I find much force in the arguments of Appellant and its amicus to the effect that:
material advances in the law of trusts ... have given beneficiaries appreciably more rights than they ever could have reasonably expected sixty years ago. [In re Williamson’s Estate, 368 Pa. 343, 82 A.2d 49 (1951) ] thus inadvertently created an artificial and anachronistic legal rule whereby the law is “fixed” in one respect only, but not in all other respects: beneficiaries can now hold trustees to significantly higher standards, and hold them legally accountable for making a whole host of additional decisions, yet not compensate the trustee commensurate with those increased responsibilities and risks.
Brief for Amicus Pa. Bankers Ass’n at 14 (emphasis omitted). In this regard, I fully agree with the undisputed proposition that a rational basis undergirds the Legislature’s sustained efforts to modernize compensation rules applicable to so-called “Williamson’s Estate trusts” to account for trustees’ manifestly increased responsibilities and financial exposure.
Justice ORIE MELVIN joins this concurring opinion.