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Judge, Superior Court of Pennsylvania
Com. v. Summers, B.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2021-01-21 · cited 92×
This case involved the resentencing of Brandon K. Summers, who was convicted in 2005 of second-degree murder and robbery for a 2003 shooting death committed when he was 17 years old; he had originally received a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, which made such mandatory sentences unconstitutional for juvenile offenders and applied retroactively, Summers was resentenced in 2019 to 40 years to life imprisonment. Summers appealed, arguing that the new sentence was an impermissible de facto life sentence and that the mandatory life maximum violated constitutional requirements. The Superior Court affirmed the sentence, holding that it was bound by its prior precedent requiring a maximum term of life imprisonment for juveniles convicted of second-degree murder before 2012, while allowing the minimum term to be set based on traditional sentencing factors.
criminal law
Com. v. Ballard, E.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2020-12-22
Evan D. Ballard was convicted after a non-jury trial of access device fraud and identity theft based on evidence that he was found in a vehicle at a gas station with five credit cards whose information did not match the names or numbers on the cards, in the context of a larger scheme involving fraudulent cards. The trial court imposed one year of probation on each count. On appeal, the Superior Court affirmed the access device fraud conviction but reversed the identity theft conviction, holding that the evidence was insufficient because the Commonwealth failed to prove that the names associated with the scanned cards (such as Anthony Damino and Carol Adler) belonged to actual living persons rather than fictitious identities, as required by precedent in Commonwealth v. Newton. The court noted that no witnesses observed Ballard using any cards and that the burden remained on the prosecution to establish the identities were real.
criminal law
Kornfeind, W. v. New Werner Holding Co.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2020-11-09 · cited 13×
This case involves William Kornfeind, an Illinois resident injured in 2013 when a 28-foot fiberglass ladder he purchased in the late 1990s allegedly slid or telescoped, rendering him a quadriplegic. He sued New Werner Holding Co., the successor to the manufacturer (Old Ladder Co.), and Home Depot as the alleged retailer, asserting strict product liability and negligence claims related to the ladder's design and manufacture. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania reversed the trial court's denial of summary judgment to Home Depot because Kornfeind failed to produce non-speculative evidence linking the ladder to that retailer. It affirmed the denial of summary judgment to New Werner, reasoning that Pennsylvania's borrowing statute does not encompass statutes of repose, factual disputes exist over the ladder's design location for conflict-of-laws purposes, and New Werner waived certain successor-liability arguments by not raising them below.
torts & liabilityprocedure
Calabretta, C. v. Guidi Homes Inc.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2020-10-19 · cited 15×
This case involved homeowners suing Guidi Homes, Inc. and Spring House Farm, Inc. for alleged construction defects in newly built homes, with the defendants moving for summary judgment on grounds including that the claims were barred by Pennsylvania's 12-year statute of repose for construction projects. The trial court granted the motion in part, dismissing negligence claims under the gist of the action doctrine, but denied it as to the statute of repose defense, noting uncertainty in the law. On appeal, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania quashed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, holding that the partial denial of summary judgment was not an immediately appealable collateral order because the statute of repose defense could still be raised and litigated at trial without being irreparably lost. The court emphasized that the collateral order doctrine must be construed narrowly to avoid piecemeal appeals and that the defendants retained the ability to seek review after a final judgment.
propertyproceduretorts & liability
Com. v. Shires, D., II
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2020-09-28 · cited 26×
This case concerns Dennis L. Shires, II, who in 2002 pleaded guilty to rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and aggravated indecent assault and received a sentence that included prison terms followed by 20 years of supervision by the State Board of Probation and Parole, subject only to the condition that he pay costs, fines, and restitution. Years later the Board imposed numerous additional supervision conditions on Shires, which the trial court later incorporated by order; after Shires completed parole and while serving probation, the Board charged him with violating some of those conditions, leading the trial court to revoke probation and impose a new sentence of three to ten years' incarceration. On appeal the Superior Court concluded that the Board lacked authority to impose conditions that were neither court-ordered nor germane to the sole original probation condition, so the trial court erred by revoking probation on that basis. The court therefore vacated the 2017 judgment of sentence, reversed the revocation order, and reinstated the 2002 sentence.
criminal lawprocedure
Com. v. Barr, T.
Superior Court of Pennsylvania · 2020-09-25
This case concerns a challenge to a warrantless search of a vehicle in a criminal prosecution, where the Commonwealth relied on the odor of marijuana and the area's status as a high-crime neighborhood to establish probable cause. The court decided that the odor of marijuana alone does not automatically constitute probable cause for a vehicle search and remanded the case to the trial court to weigh that factor along with any others in its analysis. In a concurring opinion, the judge separately addressed the high-crime area factor, concluding it should play no role in the probable cause determination because residents of such neighborhoods retain the same constitutional rights as others.
criminal lawprocedurecivil rights