September 2025 Docket Review
This month, the Court issued 9 precedential opinions and 9 grants of allocatur, summarized and accessible below.
On the opinion side, there’s a lot going on. In the category of civil cases, both Tranter and Philly Trampoline Park got a lot of attention. In Tranter, the Court addressed a Superior Court decision that put some judicial glosses on the doctrine of forum non conveniens and reversed a trial court’s order transferring a case to another county. That doctrine has come to the forefront in civil cases in part due to the Court’s recent rollback of the erstwhile medical-malpractice-specific venue rule, which limited venue to counties in which said malpractice occurred. In its earlier precedent, including perhaps one of the best named cases in Pennsylvania history, Cheeseman v. Lethal Exterminator, the Court embraced a broad, flexible version of the doctrine which gave significant discretion to trial courts to determine whether the plaintiff’s chosen forum was oppressive or vexatious. In Tranter, the Superior Court added what seemed like additional rules (or at least special considerations) on top, including the availability of remote technology for depositions and the like, and qualitative assessments of witness importance. The Court found these glosses to be unwarranted, emphasizing, for example, that there is no right to force remote depositions under the Rules of Civil Procedure, and regirding its broad, flexible approach. In a concurring opinion, Justice Mundy faulted the majority for overemphasizing the notion that travel is vexatious, which, regardless of whether the majority did, only serves to underline that the overall analysis is fact-specific. Tranter in this regard has been called a win in some measure for the civil defense bar, who had feared the Court adopting the Superior Court’s glosses as authoritative. But it is probably more of a win for the courts, whose task in the context of forum non conveniens now has fewer rules and more discretion.
On the other hand, in Philly Trampoline Park, the Court found that parents’ execution of arbitration agreements on their children’s behalf are not enforceable against the child. Notably, the decision was not based on characteristics of arbitration as such, which would likely run afoul of United States Supreme Court precedent interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act, but, rather, based on the relationship between parents, their children, and the law as something of an independent guardian, as it pertains to children’s property interests in potential claims. The decision is a major win for plaintiffs and the plaintiffs’ bar.
I’m also interested in Lewis, which involved a longstanding issue in the law of search and seizure. At the risk of turning this into a history blog, protections against search and seizure arose in large part due to the British Crown’s use and abuse of general warrants and writs of assistance in the colonies, and so a hallmark of search and seizure law has been a requirement of an individualized basis to detain or search a particular person or place. Over the years, the requirement became less and less individualized and particular by allowing consideration of “circumstances,” including, most relevant here, whether an individual’s conduct occurred in a “high crime area.” And in Illinois v. Wardlow (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court held that “headlong flight” in a “high crime area” constituted reasonable suspicion to subject someone to an investigative detention. And in the years since Wardlow, “headlong flight” has turned into an vanishingly small amount of “evasive action.” And, central in Lewis, there is likely nowhere in the world that someone will not testify is a “high-crime area.” In Lewis, the majority attempts to put the breaks on this latter problem, “urg[ing] suppression courts to review highcrime area designations with caution and emphasize that merely intoning buzzwords is never sufficient to prove an area is high in crime.” Which is an improvement in theory, but difficult to expect will occur in practice. Justice Wecht, in a concurring and dissenting opinion, offered a view that treating individuals differently based on their environs effectively subjected rich and poor to different constitutional standards, obviously an anathema to the notion of constitutional equality. In fact he specifically invoked a quotation from Orwell’s 1984 that “all Animals are equal but some Animals are more equal than others,” calling to mind the Anatole France quote, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” Justice Donohue, in a dissenting opinion, reiterated an earlier view that the Commonwealth had failed to prove with competent evidence (i.e. beyond buzzwords) that the area in question was, in fact, a “high crime area,” and that whether or not an area was “high crime” was irrelevant to the question of individualized suspicion. It remains to be seen whether and to what degree the new Lewis standard works, or doesn’t.
Finally, in Ctr. for Coalfield Justice, the Court recognized that county boards of election have a duty to notify voters who have cast facially invalid absentee or mail-in ballots of their invalidity so as to allow them to cast provisional ballots. The decision is not a shock, given the Court’s earlier holding that those voters are entitled to cast provisional ballots, but is part of the ongoing battle over voting rights and election law generally, in which the Court has largely issued decisions consistent with the so-called “democracy canon,” to promote the franchise, rather than to stifle it.
On the allocatur side, I’m interested in Leiser and Devore, in which the Court will address claims of wrongful termination in violation of public policy. In Weaver v. Harpster (2005), the Court put together a fairly narrow path for claims of wrongful termination in violation of public policy, emphasizing that the public policy in question had to be largely unimpeachable, and, in these two cases, the Court appears poised to revisit and/or apply that standard in the context of two statutes relating to liquor regulation and emergency medical services. The former is arguably controversial, but the latter probably isn’t. It will be interesting to see whether and how the Court gives guidance in this area, particularly given that one facet of its work over the several years has been about the value of work and workers. I’m also interested to see Livingston, which involves a challenge to a Philadelphia-specific gun control measure as Commonwealth-sanctioned discrimination against constitutionally protected exercise of gun rights. Although the battle about gun violence is largely pitched on partisan terms right now, this Court has been fairly friendly, all things being equal, to gun rights, and has considerably refocused Pennsylvania’s former “equal protection” jurisprudence into antidiscrimination jurisprudence under a more rigorous, Pennsylvania-specific rubric. The statute may not be long for this world.
Additionally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Court’s adoption of an interim policy for the use of generative AI by judicial officers and their staff alike. The policy permits use of generative AI “i. to summarize documents; ii. to conduct preliminary legal research, provided the GenAI tool used was trained on a comprehensive, up-to-date collection of reputable legal authorities; iii. to draft initial versions of documents, such as communications, and memoranda; iv. to edit and assess the readability of public documents; and v. to provide interactive chatbots or similar services to the public and self-represented litigants.” Whatever your opinion on the use of AI in litigation, there is now the added dimension of wondering whether the Court has used it as well.
Precedential Opinions
Housing Auth. of City of Pgh. v. Nash, 16 WAP 2024 (Opinion by Donohue, J.) (holding a public-housing lease permitted eviction of tenants based on third-party crimes)
See also Dissenting Opinion by Wecht, J.
Natl. Hockey League Players Assn. v. City of Pgh., 20 WAP 2024 (Opinion by Wecht, J.) (holding Pittsburgh’s “jock tax” on income non-residents earn performing at public stadiums violates the Pennsylvania constitutional Uniformity Clause)
See also Concurring Opinion by Donohue, J.
See also Concurring Opinion by Mundy, J.
Commonwealth v. Smith, 35-36 EAP 2024 (Opinion by Donohue, J.) (holding a trial court permissibly refused to inquire whether jurors would credit the testimony of an alleged child sexual assault victim as such)
Santiago v. Philly Trampoline Park, LLC, 24-25 EAP 2023 (Opinion by Donohue, J.) (holding parents’ execution of arbitration agreements does not render them enforceable with respect to their child’s claims )
Commonwealth v. Lewis, 37 EAP 2024 (Opinion by Dougherty, J.) (reaffirming trial court discretion in the context of determinations that an area is a “high crime” area but requiring increased caution)
Tranter v. Z&D Tour, 18-32 EAP 2024 (Opinion by Wecht, J.) (rejecting several judicial glosses on forum non conveniens doctrine)
See also Concurring Opinion by Mundy, J.
Interstate Gas Supply, Inc. v. Pub. Util. Commn., 10 MAP 2024 (Opinion by Brobson, J.) (holding that an electric distribution company may engage in “on-bill billing” offering its own non-commodity goods and services to customers while denying electric generation suppliers the option)
See also Concurring Opinion by Mundy, J.
Green Analytics North, LLC v. Pa. Dept. of Health, 76 MAP 2023 (Opinion by McCaffery, J.) (holding an administrative requirement that growers and processors of medical marijuana employ separate labs for testing harvested marijuana and processed marijuana was within statutory authority)
See also Dissenting Opinion by Wecht, J.
Ctr. for Coalfield Justice v. Washington Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 28 WAP 2024 (Opinion by Dougherty, J.) (holding election boards must notify voters who cast invalid absentee or mail-in ballots of their invalidity so as to allow them to cast provisional ballots)
See also Dissenting Opinion by Mundy, J.
See also Dissenting Opinion by Brobson, J.
Allocatur Grants
Commonwealth v. Farlow, 132 EAL 2025 & Commonwealth v. Parker, 147 EAL 2025 (granting review to consider the availability of pre-trial speedy trial rules to prosecutions for misdemeanors in Philadelphia)
Commonwealth v. Holley, 71 EAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether modification of an already-served sentence violates federal and/or Pennsylvania constitutional prohibitions on double jeopardy when the sentence was illegal)
In re: Appointment to Fill a Vacancy in the Office of County Commissioner, 420 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether home rule municipalities may adopt their own procedures for the appointment of county comissioners)
Commonwealth v. Livingston, 112 EAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether the state criminalizing carrying a firearm in Philadelphia violates the federal constitutional prohibition on states denying equal protection of the law or the Pennsylvania constitutional prohibition on Commonwealth discrimination in the exercise of civil rights)
Carr v. First Cmwlth. Bank, 97 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether a trial court had jurisdiction to review an arbitration award despite an untimely appeal because the untimeliness was caused by non-negligent happenstance)
Leiser v. Chester Valley Golf Club, 654 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider a claim of wrongful termination in violation of public policy underlying the Pennsylvania Liquor Code)
Commonwealth v. Lowrey, 169 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider whether the Vehicle Code requires a motorist to signal before turning onto a roadway from a trafficway)
Mutchler v. Pa. Ofc. of Admin. (Ofc. Open Records), 196 MAL 2025 (granting review to consider the scope of public records subject to disclosure in the context of government agents and contractors)
Devore v. Metro Aviation, Inc., 36-37 WAL 2025 (granting review to consider claim of wrongful termination in violation of public policy underlying the Emergency Medical Services System Act)
Other
In re: Interim Policy on the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence by Judicial Officers and Court Personnel, 643 JA (adopting an interim policy on the use of generative AI by judicial officers and court staff, available here)
