Court Opinion

ID: 9766065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:31:03.899232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:19.146249
License: Public Domain

*193Chief Justice GAPPY,
Dissenting.
In my view, under the Pennsylvania Shield Law, 42 Pa.C.S. § 5942, Mark Bowden (“Bowden”) and Linn Washington Jr. (“Washington”) cannot be compelled to disclose Brian Tyson’s (“Tyson”) statements.1 Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
I begin with this court’s decision in In re Taylor, 412 Pa. 32, 193 A.2d 181 (1963). For all intents and purposes, the relevant facts in Taylor are on all fours. There, as here, in connection with a criminal proceeding, the trial court ordered two newspapermen to produce documents that contained the unpublished statements that a disclosed source had made to reporters.2 Raising the Shield Law, the newspapermen refused to comply with the order. The trial court determined that the Shield Law protects only persons, and found the newspapermen guilty of contempt.
On appeal, we reversed. Rejecting the trial court’s interpretation of the Shield Law and concluding that the statute protects documents as well as persons, we held that the trial court could not compel the production of reporters notes and recordings, which included a disclosed sources statements. Id. at 184,186.
We reached our decision by determining what the General Assembly intended the Shield Law to protect through its use of the words “the source of any information” in the statute. In this regard, we stated: “[w]e believe the language of the Statute is clear. The common and approved meaning or usage *194of the words ‘source of information’ includes documents as well as personal informants. ‘Source’ means not only the identity of the person, but likewise includes documents, inanimate objects and all source of information. Id. at 184-85 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). Significantly, in our interpretation of the meaning of the Shield Laws language, we did not distinguish between confidential and non-confidential sources or place limits on the information the statute protects.
We then stated that the Shield Law must be liberally construed in favor of the news media, and to make clear just how broadly protective the statute is, we took judicial notice of the fact that the tips and leads that the news media rely upon for reporting on matters of great public importance would dry up unless newsmen are able to fully and completely protect the sources of their information. Id. at 185 (emphasis in original).
We went on to explain why the trial courts direction that the names be redacted from produced materials, see supra n. 2, would have failed to serve the trial courts well-intentioned, but mistaken, belief that the Shield Law protects only persons, by pointing out that “[n]o one could know "with certainty whether the documents as deleted by the newsman would still reveal sources of information which the [Shield Law] intended to protect. Id. at 186.
Further, we resolved that the trial court wrongly determined that the Shield Laws protection had been waived because the newspaper had named its source, stating that a waiver by a newsman applies only to the statements made by an informer which are actually published or publicly disclosed and not to other statements made by the informer to the newspaper. Id. (footnote omitted).
Finally, we clarified that the Shield Laws purpose, object and intent would be realistically nullified if the courts were to determine what information in documents should be protected and what information should be disclosed. Id. (emphasis in original).
*195This interpretation of the Shield Law drew a pointed dissent from Justice Cohen, who took issue with the determination that the statute covers both information and persons. Justice Cohen believed that the Shield Law covered only the identity of sources. He asserted that the purpose of the Shield Law “is to encourage the flow of news [from] persons who might otherwise fear the unfavorable publicity or retribution resulting from the revelation of their name as the source of the news storyt,] and believed that [t]his purpose is accomplished by permitting the newsman to conceal the name of the informant.” Id. at 187 (Cohen, J., dissenting). According to Justice Cohen, it is the name of the informant and and [sic] not the information itself which is protected. Once the name of the informant is revealed, the purpose and protection of the Act is terminated. Id. (emphasis in original). „
In 1968, five years after Taylor was decided, the General Assembly amended the Shield Law to expand the statutes coverage to include reporters employed by the electronic and wire services.3 Eight years after that, in 1976, the General Assembly reenacted the Shield Law in its entirety.4 On both of these occasions, the legislature did not make changes to the words source of information in the statute. Thus, under the Statutory Construction Acts instruction, this court should presume that the legislature intends that we place on the Shield Law today the interpretation we gave those words in Taylor. See 1 Pa.C.S.1922(4).5
*196Accordingly, I believe that in the present case, the Shield Law protects Bowden and Washington from disclosing Tysons unpublished statements because the statute reflects our decision in Taylor, which, as I understand it, holds that the Shield Law protects a known source’s information (like his statements) that has not been published.
The majority presently comes to a different result because it “read[s] [Taylor ] as standing only for the proposition that documents are to be considered sources where their production, even with all the names redacted, could breach the confidentiality of a human source.” (See Majority Opinion, 576 Pa. at 166, 838 A.2d at 749) (footnote omitted).6 In other words, Taylor held that the Shield Law protects only persons, not information.
„ This is not, however, what this court’s majority in Taylor held. It is, instead, the position that Justice Cohen took regarding the Shield Law’s meaning in his dissenting opinion. See Taylor 193 A.2d at 187 (Cohen, J. dissenting). Thus, in the present case, the majority does not “read” Taylor, but rather, overrules and re-writes it.
In doing so, the majority violates two fundamental principles of Pennsylvania jurisprudence. First, the majority disregards the doctrine of stare decisis. As we have stated, the doctrine simply declares that, for the sake of certainty a conclusion reached in one case should be applied to those which follow, if the facts are substantially the same even though the parties may be different. See Burtts Estate, 353 Pa. 217, 44 A.2d 670, 677 (1945) (quotation omitted). Second, the majority ignores the prohibition against judicial legislation. In re-writing Taylor, the majority has amended the Shield *197Law, because Taylor, as originally written, is what the General Assembly intends the Shield Law to mean. See 1 Pa.C.S. 1922(4).7
I, therefore, respectfully dissent. And because I believe that the Shield Law does not allow a court to order Bowden and Washington to disclose Tyson’s statements, I would reverse the Superior Court’s order.8
Justice CASTILLE joins this dissenting opinion.

. The Shield Law provides in relevant part:
§ 5942. Confidential communications to news reporters (a) General rale. — No person engaged on, connected with, or employed by any newspaper of general circulation or any press association or any radio or television station, or any magazine of general circulation, for the purpose of gathering, procuring, compiling, editing or publishing news, shall be required to disclose the source of any information procured or obtained by such person, in any legal proceeding, trial or investigation before any government unit.
42 Pa.C.S. § 5942(a).

. There was a difference in the trial court orders. In Taylor, the trial court ordered that the names of persons be deleted from any materials produced. Taylor, 193 A.2d at 186. In this case, the trial court did not order a similar redaction.

. See and compare 28 Pa.C.S. § 330, Act of June 25, 1937, P.L. 2123, No.433, § 1, as amended Dec. 1, 1959, P.L. 1669, § 1 with id., as amended July 31, 1968. P.L. 858, § 1.

. See Judiciary Act of 1976, No. 142, § 2, ch. 59, subch. A, § 5942, 1976 Pa. Laws 586, 725-26.

. The Statutory Construction Act provides in relevant part:
§ 1922. Presumptions in ascertaining legislative intent In ascertaining the intention of the General Assembly in the enactment of a statute the following presumptions, among others, may be used:
(4) That when a court of last resort has construed the language used in a statute, the General Assembly in subsequent statutes on the same *196subject matter intends the same construction to be placed upon such language.
1 Pa.C.S. § 1992(4).

. At this point, I also observe that the sentence from Taylor that the majority cites to support its reading of that decision — that ‘‘[n]o one could know with certainty whether the documents as deleted by the newsman would still reveal sources of information which the [Shield Law]” intended to protectO, 193 A.2d at 186 — served only to explain why the trial court would not have accomplished its goal to protect the identity of persons through its production order. Id. at 186.

. Inasmuch as I would reverse the Superior Court’s order on a statutory basis, I would not reach the issue raised under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

. Our decision in Hatchard v. Westinghouse Broadcasting Co., 516 Pa. 184, 532 A.2d 346 (1987), also illustrates my point. In that case, we held that "unpublished documentary information gathered by a television station is discoverable by a plaintiff in a libel action to the extent that the documentary information does not reveal the identity of a personal source of information or may be redacted to eliminate the revelation of a personal source of information.” Id. at 348-49, 350-51. If Taylor, as written, stands for the proposition the majority ascribes to it, we would have based our decision in Hatchard on Taylor. However, we did not. Instead, in Hatchard, we expressly recognized that Taylor was inapplicable and grounded our interpretation of the Shield Law in defamation cases on the “constitutionalization” of the area and the fact that the Pennsylvania Constitution expressly identifies reputation as a fundamental interest. Id. at 348.