Court Opinion

ID: 9647797
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:50:48.133505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:53.519195
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I am in complete agreement with the scholarly analysis on the substantive issues which is set forth in the majority opinion. I dissent only from that portion of the opinion which holds that pursuant to Section 5103 of the Judicial Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 5103, an administrative tribunal may transfer a case erroneously filed to another tribunal. Section 5103 provides in relevant part:
(a) General rule. — If an appeal or other matter is taken to or brought in a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth which does not have jurisdiction of the appeal or other matter, the court or district justice shall not quash such appeal or dismiss the matter, but shall transfer the record thereof to the proper tribunal of this Commonwealth, where the appeal or other matter shall be treated as if originally filed in the transferee tribunal on the date when the appeal or other matter was first filed in a court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth. A matter which is within the exclusive jurisdiction of a court or district justice of this Commonwealth but which is commenced in any other tribunal of this Commonwealth shall be transferred by the other tribunal to the proper court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth where it shall be treated as if originally filed in the transferee court or magisterial district of this Commonwealth on the date when first filed in the other tribunal.
(d) Definition. — As used in this section “tribunal” means a court or district justice or other judicial officer of this Commonwealth vested with the power to enter an order in a matter, the Board of Claims, the Board of Property, the Office of Administrator for Arbitration Panels for Health Care and any other similar agency. <
A straightforward reading of this language discloses no basis for permitting one tribunal to transfer a case to another. When the legislature amended Section 5103 in *3901982 in order to permit a court to transfer a case to a tribunal or vice versa, it was clearly aware of the limitation it placed upon transfer. It specifically chose to allow transfers only between (1) courts and tribunals and (2) courts and other courts or divisions thereof. Had the legislature wished to allow for transfers among tribunals it would have clearly said so in the statute.
I believe the majority’s holding on this point constitutes an unwarranted expansion of Section 5103 that may haunt administrative agencies in the future. Extending Section 5103 to permit tribunal to tribunal, state agency to state agency, transfers (e.g., a misfiled petition before the Board of Claims may be transferred to the Board of Appeals at the Department of Revenue or the Public Utility Commission) is not analogous to the transfers specifically permitted by Section 5103, and hence, is unwarranted.
McGINLEY, J., joins in this concurring and dissenting opinion.