October 2025 Docket Review
This month, the Court issued 6 precedential opinions and 2 grants of allocatur, summarized below.
On the opinion side, it is a good month for the civil defense bar. In Wunderly, Yoder, and Gidor, the Court issued decisions limiting (or declining to expand) civil liability in a few areas. In Wunderly, the Court held that the Mental Health Procedures Act, which the Court has held creates a cause of action for substandard mental health treatment but also provides immunity unless the defendants are grossly negligent, applies not only to mental health treatment, but also to other treatment coincident to mental health treatment. In this author’s view, the statute, originally a measure designed to promote deinstitutionalization, was intended to focus on institutionalization and protect mental health practitioners in cases where they perhaps erroneously, but not grossly negligently, discharged patients, not to create a cause of action with respect to the quality of treatment itself, which is generally common-law negligence issue. Although this interpretation was foreclosed years ago by the Court’s decision in Goryeb v. Dept. of Pub. Welf., 575 A.2d 545 (Pa. 1990), subsequent decisions adopting broad interpretations of the act may now serve to limit, rather than supplement, the common law in mental health negligence settings absent legislative intervention.
Why legislative intervention? The Court’s decision in Yoder explains the point well. In that case, the Court addressed several questions related to the statutory employer doctrine in the context of workers’ compensation benefits, and, specifically, whether it should override earlier, (probably?) incorrect, interpretations of the Act limiting those benefits. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Brobson, reiterated the limits on its interpretive power. The Court identified that the doctrine of stare decisis is perhaps at its zenith in the context of statutory interpretation, in part based on the doctrine of legislative acquiescence — i.e., the notion that when the Supreme Court interprets a statute, the and the legislature doesn’t amend it, the legislature has effectively agreed with the interpretation — and held that the plaintiffs had not provided a sufficiently special justification for overruling its earlier interpretations.
For my part, I am not convinced that legislative acquiescence is a reality-based doctrine. Even assuming every legislator were to read every one of the Supreme Court’s decisions — or maybe SCOPAblog summaries? — it does not follow that their failure to legislative abrogate an interpretation amounts to agreement with them. The Legislature is a collective body, and its “decisions” are less rooted in the subjective views of legislators on particular legal issues and more based on political will and priorities. And whether there is a political will or priority to adopt a statute or interpretation of a statute in the first place is a different question than whether there is a political will or priority to override a Supreme Court’s decision. The legislative acquiescence doctrine in this regard is less about legislative acquiescence as a descriptive matter, and more a normative statement that the Court will generally address a statutory interpretive issue once, and if litigants are dissatisfied, they should seek a legislative solution absent some compelling reason beyond disagreement. Justice Brobson’s opinion will be a benchmark case for litigants attempting to revisit statutory interpretation questions for some time.
Precedential Opinions
Commonwealth v. Phillips, 5 MAP 2025 et al. (Opinion by Mundy, J.) (holding sentence that failed to provide credit for time served in a probation-detainer context illegal)
Toland v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole, 11 EAP 2024 (Opinion by Donohue, J.) (holding Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole lacked authority to establish an evidentiary privilege in its proceedings)
Wunderly v. St. Luke’s Hosp., 119 MAP 2023 (Opinion by Mundy, J.) (holding that the immunity provision of the Mental Health Procedures Act applies to non-mental-health treatment incident to mental health treatment)
See also Dissenting Opinion by Donohue, J.
Commonwealth v. Jenkins, 36 MAP 2024 (Opinion by Todd, C.J.) (holding that an applicant for ARD’s failure to disclose a pending arrest not inquired about in the application could not form the basis for a decision to revoke participation in ARD)
See also Concurring Opinion by Wecht, J.
Yoder v. McCarthy Construction, Inc., 43 EAP 2024 (Opinion by Brobson, J.) (declining to overrule earlier workers’ compensation decisions absent a special justification to do so)
See also Concurring Opinion by McCaffery, J.
Gidor v. Mangus, 24 WAP 2024 (Opinion by Donohue, J.) (holding that the one-year limitations period in the Home Inspection Law is a statute of repose)
See also Concurring Opinion by Wecht, J.
Allocatur Grants
Chris Eldredge Containers, LLC v. Crum & Foster Specialty Ins. Co., 267 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider the proper construction of an insurance policy’s auto exclusion endorsement)
Commonwealth v. Jackson, 172 EAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether the the offense of possessing instruments of crime requires evidence of possession under circumstances not manifestly appropraiate for lawful use)
