Croydon Plastics Co., Inc. v. Lower Bucks Cooling & Heating

• Decision Date: 29 July 1997
• Citation: 698 A.2d 625
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court
• Parties: CROYDON PLASTICS CO., INC., Appellant, v. LOWER BUCKS COOLING & HEATING and the Trane Company, Appellees.

Page 625

698 A.2d 625

CROYDON PLASTICS CO., INC., Appellant, v. LOWER BUCKS COOLING & HEATING and the Trane Company, Appellees.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Argued June 25, 1997.

Filed July 29, 1997.

Garland D. Cherry, Jr., Media, for appellant.

Douglas E. Ress, Philadelphia, for The Trane Company, appellee.

Before McEWEN, President Judge, and POPOVICH and OLSZEWSKI, JJ.

OLSZEWSKI, Judge.

On November 19, 1992, the Croydon Plastics Company was consumed by fire. After the three-alarm blaze was extinguished, the charred remains of the plant were unsalvageable and the estimated loss to Croydon was $4,000,000.00.

After paying Croydon approximately $1,500,000.00 in damages, Croydon's insurer initiated the instant action by filing a writ of summons in the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County. Speculating that the fire was caused by a faulty furnace, Croydon named the furnace distributor, The Trane Company, and the furnace installer, Lower Bucks Cooling & Heating, as defendants. ¹

On January 31, 1994, after being ruled to do so pursuant to Trane's praecipe, Croydon filed a complaint. Thereafter, Trane filed preliminary objections wherein it claimed that Croydon failed to plead its cause with sufficient specificity and that Trane was, therefore, unable to defend the action. The court granted Trane's objections and, on February 24, 1994, Croydon filed an amended complaint. Therein, Croydon alleged that defendants had failed to properly design, manufacture and/or install the furnace and, additionally, that defendants failed to warn users about the furnace's dangerous propensities. Relief was sought based upon breaches of contract and warranty, negligence and strict liability. Trane again filed preliminary objections asserting that the complaint lacked the necessary specificity to permit it to file a responsive pleading. These second objections were, however, denied. Trane and Lower Bucks then filed cross-claims against each other.

Shortly thereafter, on April 1, 1994, Trane served its first set of interrogatories upon Croydon, thus initiating the long, circuitous and tortuous discovery battle that culminated over two years later in a court order barring Croydon from introducing any expert testimony at trial against Trane as a sanction for its continual violations of court orders compelling discovery.

Although Croydon answered Trane's initial set of interrogatories, the responses were deemed legally inadequate and, upon motion by Trane, Croydon was ordered to provide more complete answers. Rather than provide full and complete answers to Trane's interrogatories, Croydon sought a hearing on the merits of Trane's motion. Prior to the hearing, which was held on February 24, 1995, the trial court entered two additional orders which required Croydon to comply with Trane's various discovery requests.

At the February 24, 1995, hearing on the merits of Trane's request for more complete answers to its interrogatories and various other discovery requests, Croydon asserted that it was unable to answer Trane's interrogatories because Croydon's experts had not yet completed their investigations and reports. N.T. 2/24/95 at 4; R.R. at 142a. In response, the court made the following statement and order:

Let me see if I can make this as clear as possible. You filed a lawsuit in 1993. You obviously suffered an injury; your place burned down, so I'm not making in any way light of your lawsuit. But you filed the lawsuit a couple years ago. The defendants are entitled to know what it is you claim they did wrong, and we're going to get to that point real quick now. If this was thirty days after the lawsuit was filed we wouldn't be here. But we're two years after the lawsuit was filed. I expect experts to be hired and reports to be filed quickly, and I don't mean quickly as in six months, I mean quickly as in sixty days. Because, otherwise, you're going to be staring down the barrel of my order saying file the answers or you're going to be precluded.

N.T. 2/24/95 at 9; R.R. at 147a (emphasis added).

Following this unambiguous dictate that Croydon respond to Trane's discovery requests and furnish an expert report within sixty days, a full year elapsed during which Croydon failed to comply with the court's Order. Finally, in February of 1996, Trane filed a motion with the court requesting that the court sanction Croydon for its continuous and habitual discovery violations.

On April 25, 1996, fourteen months after the court ordered Croydon to file an expert report within sixty days, a hearing was held relative to Trane's motion for sanctions. At this time, Croydon admitted that it had not furnished Trane with expert reports and claimed that the failure to do so was caused, in part, by vicious infighting among the various privately retained and insurance counsel for Croydon. The court, however, reminded counsel that the court orders had been directed to, and violated by, Croydon and not its numerous attorneys. This argument was, therefore, properly rejected.

At this point, Croydon's counsel gave conflicting explanations as to why Croydon never produced an expert report. Robert A. Stutman, Esquire, the attorney retained on Croydon's behalf by its insurer, argued that Croydon, in fact, was in possession of expert reports that had been prepared some time ago but had never been turned over to Trane. N.T. 4/25/96 at 6-7; R.R. at 309-310a. Further, Attorney Stutman stated that he was at a loss to explain why the prepared reports were not given to Trane. Id.

Conversely, Croydon's privately retained counsel, Garland Cherry, Esq., testified that it was "impossible for the plaintiff to produce an expert report against Trane until the plaintiff has more information about the gas furnace which Trane will not give to the plaintiff." N.T. 4/25/96 at 8; R.R. at 311a. The court then questioned Attorney Cherry as to why, during the fourteen months between the court order and the sanction hearing, Croydon had not taken any affirmative steps to compel Trane to produce the allegedly withheld, necessary, information. Attorney Cherry responded that, during the interim, Attorney Stutman was managing the case.

After hearing this testimony, the trial court entered the following order:

[Croydon] is barred from calling at trial any experts to testify against the Trane Company by virtue of its continuing failure to comply with our February '95 order.

Approximately three weeks thereafter, on May 20, 1996, Trane filed a motion for summary judgment against both Croydon and Lower Bucks. With respect to the causes of action pled by Croydon, Trane argued that it was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because, due to the preclusion order barring Croydon's expert testimony, Croyden could not meet its burden of production at trial. That is, absent expert testimony, Croydon could not establish that Trane either sold a defective product or, indeed, that the furnace was the impetus for the fire. After both Croydon and Lower Bucks filed answers opposing Trane's motion, the court, by order dated July 2, 1996, granted summary judgment in favor of Trane.

On August 14, 1996, Croydon filed a motion for reconsideration with the trial court of both the April, 1996 preclusion Order and the July, 1996 order granting summary judgment. However, due to Croydon's failure to file a praecipe for argument thereon, as required by local rules, the trial court did not address the merits of the reconsideration motion.

In late September of 1996, Croydon and Lower Bucks entered into a full and final release of all claims brought by Croydon as a result of the 1992 fire. In consideration of the release, and without admitting liability, Lower Bucks agreed to pay Croydon $1,000,000.00.

As a result of this settlement, Croydon's causes of action against both of the original defendants, Trane and Lower Bucks, were ended. Croydon, however, neglected to file a praecipe for discontinuance with the local prothonotary in order to officially terminate its action against Lower Bucks.

Croydon then filed the instant appeal, wherein it alleges that (1) the trial court abused its discretion in determining that preclusion was an appropriate method of sanctioning Croydon for its dilatory conduct; and (2) summary judgment was improvidently granted in light of the outstanding crossclaim of Lower Bucks against Trane.

In addition to arguing that the trial court, after considering the particulars of this case, did not abuse it discretion in precluding Croydon's expert testimony or in granting summary judgment, Trane argues that the present appeal is not properly before this Court and should, therefore, be quashed. The trial court agreed with this position and has not, therefore, addressed the merits of Croydon's claims.

Pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 341, an appeal must be taken, with certain exceptions not presently applicable, from a final order of a lower tribunal. Further, the Rule provides that a final order is, inter alia, an order that "disposes of all claims or of all parties." Pa.R.A.P. 341(b)(1). Both Trane and the trial court argue that, because the July 2, 1996, summary judgment order did not dispose of Croydon's outstanding claims against Lower Bucks, it was not a final, appealable, order. Moreover, because the later settlement agreement between Croydon and Lower Bucks was never docketed, the official record does not reflect the parties' settlement.

We agree that, as a matter of technical application, Croydon's appeal should be quashed as premature; for, according to the official record, Croydon's action against Lower Bucks is still pending. In the interests of judicial economy, however, this Court will "regard as done that which ought to have been done" and address the merits of Croydon's appeal. Randt v. Abex Corp., 448 Pa.Super. 224, 231, 671 A.2d 228, 231 (1996). As this Court recently stated prior to addressing the merits of an appeal in which no judgment was reflected in the...