Court Opinion

ID: 9737190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:18:30.789528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:57.121858
License: Public Domain

BYER, Judge,
concurring.
I find this to be a close case. Ordinarily, one would think that it is the responsibility of the complainant to prepare and file a proper complaint within the applicable time limit. Here, it appears that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission actually was responsible for preparing the final version of the complaint.
The record shows that counsel for Ms. Winterberger filled out and sent to the commission a questionnaire and complaint on standard forms provided by the commission (22a, 23a, 33a). The complaint form provided by the commission (33a) did not have any page for the signature and verification of the complainant.
The record also shows that counsel for Ms. Winterberger, after sending these forms to the commission, was diligent in contacting the commission by telephone and in writing to ascertain the status of the case, but that commission representatives informed him that the processing of the complaint was interrupted by the strike. On October 3, 1988, a commission representative informed counsel for Ms. Winter*222berger that the strike resulted in many complaints not reaching the commission’s intake officers, and that Ms. Winterberger’s complaint appeared to be one of these (38a). Therefore, the following day, counsel for Ms. Winterberger resubmitted the complaint by sending a new copy with an explanation to the commission’s intake supervisor in Pittsburgh (38a).
On November 22, 1988, a representative of the commission sent Ms. Winterberger a letter “enclosing the Complaint that you wish to file before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.” (40a). The commission representative requested in the letter that Ms. Winterberger review the complaint, contact the representative for instructions on how to correct any errors which might appear in the facts as stated, sign the complaint before a notary public and return the signed and notarized complaint to the representative within 10 days. (Id.) The enclosed complaint (41a) was identical to the form which Ms. Winterberger’s counsel had sent to the commission on June 30, 1988 (33a), except that the commission had attached to the complaint the commission’s standard execution and verification page (45a).
At oral argument, counsel for the commission informed us that with the exception of the delays caused by the strike, the commission processed this case in accordance with its standard procedures.
Therefore, the record clearly establishes that the commission and not Ms. Winterberger was responsible for preparing the final executed and verified complaint. The record also clearly establishes that it was the commission’s fault that the complaint in this case was filed beyond the statutory time limit.
Based upon these facts, I join the majority opinion. However, I question the wisdom of the commission’s procedure, as followed in this case. There is no reason why the commission cannot attach the signature/verification page to the form complaint it provides initially to complainants. The commission’s unnecessary two-step procedure, combined with the unusual circumstance of a strike, is what *223caused the problem here. There would have been no problem, and this “subsidiary” litigation over the timeliness of the complaint would have been unnecessary, if the commission simply had provided Ms. Winterberger or her counsel with the signature/verification page as part of the original form. I hope this case will cause the commission to reexamine its procedure it if has not already done so.