Kramer v. Schaeffer

751 A.2d 241, 2000 Pa. Super. 127, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 394
CourtSuperior Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedApril 20, 2000
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 751 A.2d 241 (Kramer v. Schaeffer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kramer v. Schaeffer, 751 A.2d 241, 2000 Pa. Super. 127, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 394 (Pa. Ct. App. 2000).

Opinions

CIRILLO, President Judge Emeritus:

¶ 1 Allen and Darlene Kramer (h/w) appeal from the order entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County denying their motion to enforce a settlement agreement and impose sanctions for failure to deliver settlement funds. We reverse and remand for sanctions and the award of attorney’s fees.

¶ 2 The Kramers instituted suit against Appellee, Kathleen Schaefer, for injuries Allen sustained in an automobile accident caused by Schaefer.1 At the time of the accident the Schaefer vehicle was insured under a policy issued by Allstate Insurance Company. The parties proceeded to arbitration and a $10,000,000 award was handed down in favor of the Kramers. Subsequently Schaefer appealed the decision to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. Prior to trial, Allstate offered the Kramers $3,500.00 (“pre-trial offer/first offer/original offer”) to settle the case. The Kram-ers rejected the offer. After a two day jury trial, Schaefer was found hable for the Kramers’ personal injuries; the jury, however, awarded zero damages to the Kram-ers.2

¶ 3 Subsequent to trial, the Allstate adjuster who had been involved in the case commenced maternity leave. She handed the case over to another insurance company adjuster. On September 17, 1999, not aware that the case had already been tried to a jury verdict, this newly appointed adjuster contacted the Kramers’ attorney and offered to settle (“post-verdict offer/second offer”) the matter for $3,500.00. The Kramers’ attorney accepted. The following day, the Kramers attorney sent Allstate a letter confirming its settlement offer and his acceptance and requested a release be prepared acknowledging that his clients would have no future claims against Schaefer. Thereafter, on September 21,1998, the Allstate adjuster who had tendered the post-verdict settlement offer sent the Kramers the following letter:

Please note that this file had been reassigned to me on September 17 th, 1998 from Ms. Christine Shenouda who is presently out on maternity leave. On the 17 th, I called your office to settle this case[;] at that time I was not aware that this case had already been tried. Your ethics astound me because when discussing this case you did not mention that same had already been tried and you were well aware that I was not the original adjuster on the case.
At this time Allstate will not be making payment to your client, we will be standing by the $0.00 verdict.

¶4 On September 23, 1998, the Kram-ers’ attorney likewise sent a letter to Allstate stating that he considered the case settled for $3,500.00 pursuant to the parties’ telephone conversation and that he expected a signed release from Allstate and fully expected Allstate to honor the settlement agreement. When Allstate continually failed to acknowledge or honor the proposed offer it had tendered on the 17 th, the Kramers filed a petition to enforce the settlement and also requested sanctions for failure to deliver settlement funds. See Phila.Civ.R. 229.1. The trial court denied the Kramers’ petition. On appeal, the Kramers present the following issues for our review:

(1) Was there an enforceable settlement agreement between the parties?
(2) Were there no grounds to set aside the settlement agreement?
[244]*244(3) Should all of the averments of the motion to enforce settlement [have] been accepted as true, and the motion granted for this reason?

¶ 5 Before addressing the substantive merits of this case, we must first ascertain whether the issues in the appeal are preserved for our review. Schaefer argues that the issues on appeal are waived because the Kramers failed to file post-trial motions in accordance with Pa. R.C.P. 227.1. We disagree. Post-trial motion relief may be granted only when the grounds asserted were raised in pretrial proceedings or by another appropriate method at trial. Pa.R.C.P. 227.1(b)(1). Such grounds must be specifically raised in the motion. Pa.R.C.P. 227.1(b)(2). Presently, the issue on appeal concerns a post-verdict settlement offer and its enforceability.3 As such, the present concern does not involve any ground that was raised either in pre-trial or trial proceedings. Therefore, we find Pa.R.C.P. 227.1 inapplicable to the instant situation and the Kramers’ failure to conform thereto not an obstacle to review their claim.4

¶ 6 We, however, must also determine whether a motion to enforce a settlement offer/agreement is considered a final order for purposes of invoking our jurisdiction under Pa.R.A.P. 341. Recently, in Geniviva v. Frisk, 555 Pa. 589, 725 A.2d 1209 (1999), our supreme court was faced with the issue of whether a common pleas court order denying a motion to approve a pre-trial settlement was a collateral order appealable as of right under Pa.R.A.P. 313. On direct appeal our court had quashed the appeal, finding the order neither final nor collateral under our appellate rules. The supreme court affirmed our court’s decision stating:

We believe it likewise defies common sense to maintain that allowing appeals as of right from orders denying enforcement of settlement agreements, or, as here, denying approval of a settlement agreement, promotes the “efficient, expeditious and judicious resolution of disputes.” Any efficiencies gained in reduced trial litigation would be at the expense of increased appellate litigation.

Id. at 598, 725 A.2d at 1214. Moreover, the Geniviva court found that only those claims that “involve interests ‘deeply rooted in public policy’ can be considered ‘too important to be denied review.’ ” Id. at 599, 725 A.2d 1209. As such the supreme court affirmed the order quashing the appeal, finding that the common pleas court’s order denying the motion to approve the parties’ settlement implicated no policy interests of sufficient import that required an immediate appeal. Id.

¶ 7 The distinguishing factor between this case and cases with facts similar to Geniviva is the time that the relevant settlement offer was tendered. Presently, we are concerned with post-verdict offers, while Geniviva applied our appellate rules to the interlocutory nature of appealing a trial court’s order refusing to enforce/approve a pre-trial settlement agreement. In the former case, we acknowledge that the case has already been tried to a ver-[245]*245diet, that the parties have already expended the costs of litigation and that damages have been determined. That being said, we are still concerned with the costs of appellate litigation and the appeals process in general which not only involves the expending of legal means, but also judicial resources. However, we do not believe that this court should come to the same result regarding the appealability of a post-verdict settlement based upon case law dealing with the same issue in a pretrial offer context. First, a settlement of-feree does not have the same recourse for enforcement of a post-verdict offer as does a pre-verdict offeree. In the latter scenario, the party “is free to raise the issue of the validity of the settlement agreement on appeal from the judgment on the underlying claim, or in a collateral action.” Knisel, supra at 256.

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Bluebook (online)
751 A.2d 241, 2000 Pa. Super. 127, 2000 Pa. Super. LEXIS 394, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kramer-v-schaeffer-pasuperct-2000.