HARRISBURG – The concept of sovereign immunity as it relates to state property will soon be taken up by Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which will hear an appeal from a Huntingdon County resident who claims such immunity should not be applied to an incident during which she sustained a broken ankle near her residence.
Plaintiff Sharon Wise was a tenant of the Chestnut Terrace public housing development in Mount Union and on May 9, 2013, was taking a nighttime walk with her sister on the sidewalk. Due to the darkness of the hour and an absence of visible lighting, she said she was not able to see the separation between the sidewalk and parking lot, and subsequently fell onto the parking lot asphalt.
As a result, Wise broke her ankle.
In 2015, Wise filed a lawsuit in the Huntingdon County Court of Common Pleas seeking damages for the injury, and argued that the Huntingdon County Housing Authority breached its duty to her by not having adequate outside lighting in her housing complex. Wise’s suit conceded there was a light in the vicinity, but that at the location where she fell, that same light was obscured by a large tree.
According to presiding judge George Zanic, the Huntingdon County Housing Authority was immune from suit as a government agency. However, Zanic did provide examples of real estate-based exceptions to this rule.
Such exceptions included prior occasions where inadequate lighting caused residents to fall down inside stairwells at complexes provided by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, though Zanic added those accidents transpired within the buildings and the Philadelphia Housing Authority did not maintain proper upkeep of those same buildings.
The Huntingdon County Housing Authority sought to distinguish the Wise case from these actions, however, because it argued the alleged lack of proper lighting in the instant matter was caused by natural darkness, as opposed to any negligence or neglect.
Zanic agreed and the case was dismissed, ruling that any exception to governmental immunity in real estate actions
Zanic ruled the immunity exception “must...originate in the Commonwealth reality itself” and that the Wise lawsuit did not include such an exception.
“[This case] seeks to expand the real estate exception to encompass (outside) lighting and we are not inclined to do so,” Zanic said.
Wise appealed the case to the Commonwealth Court on the grounds that the trial court erred in its analysis, but the appellate court sided with Zanic’s ruling.
“Exterior nighttime darkness on Commonwealth property is not an artificial condition. Thus, whether the tree or pole light are fixtures is irrelevant since they did not cause the natural exterior nighttime darkness,” Commonwealth Court Judge Anne E. Covey said.
“The Commonwealth’s failure to adequately remove or alter a naturally occurring condition – exterior darkness – is not a situation for which the General Assembly waived sovereign immunity. Although the Commonwealth might have a duty to illuminate a naturally dark exterior area, sovereign immunity bars Commonwealth liability for such alleged failure.”
Believing the Commonwealth Court also erred in its analysis, Wise then appealed the case for the second time, to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Though it does not often hear appeals from the Superior and Commonwealth courts, interestingly, it did agree on Dec. 27 to consider the Wise case – specifically, as to “whether the Commonwealth Court, in affirming the Huntingdon County trial court’s grant of summary judgment, has unwarrantedly expanded sovereign immunity…and hence, continued the dwindling applicability of the real estate exception…to a dangerous level in its continued disregard of the legislative intent of the Sovereign Immunity Act and enumerated exceptions, and also advances existing conflict and confusion within an already unclear legal history?”
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania case 97 MAP 2019
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com