explaining that "a cause of action that has accrued ... is a vested right, which under Article 1, Section 11, may not be eliminated by subsequent legislation"
How later courts described this case
- explaining that "a cause of action that has accrued ... is a vested right, which under Article 1, Section 11, may not be eliminated by subsequent legislation"
- providing that under the Remedies Clause of Article I, Section 11 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, an accrued cause of action is a vested right and, as such, cannot be eliminated by subsequent legislation
- explaining that Article 1, Section 11 prevents the General Assembly from extinguishing an already-accrued cause of action
- analysis of Article I, Section 11 — courts to be open; remedy by due course of law for injury; statute held to be unconstitutional
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice SAYLOR,
dissenting.
As indicated in the common pleas court’s summary of the undisputed facts, Crown Cork is a Pennsylvania packaging manufacturing corporation that has never in its 110-year history made, distributed, or sold asbestos—its potential liability to plaintiffs in asbestos-related causes of action is predicated solely on the theory of successor liability based upon its brief, passive ownership of a company that once produced asbestos but did not do so while in Crown Cork’s control. None of the cases presently cited by the majority involves a successor liability paradigm; rather, each concerns attempts to adjust interests and/or liabilities between parties with more *165 direct involvement in the underlying affairs giving rise to the interests/liabilities at stake.
In my view, this attribute of the potential liabilities that the General Assembly has sought to address is due a greater role than the majority allows it in the assessment of the legislation’s consonance with the Remedies Clause, Pa. Const, art. I, § 11. Successor liability in the context of a merger represents an assumption of liabilities by operation of law which has the effect of exposing the successor’s larger pool of assets to liability that, absent the merger, would not have attached. See generally 3 Summary of Pennsylvania Jurisprudence 2d Torts § 41.104 (West Group 1999). It is an issue of first impression whether the excess exposure created by the doctrine must share the same degree of vesting under Remedies Clause as would the tortfeasor’s primary liability in the first instance. Where, as here, the General Assembly has attempted to reasonably limit such assumed, excess exposure, 1 and particularly in a situation in which the successor corporation already has contributed toward payment of asbestos-related claims an amount several fold the value of the acquired entity’s assets, I would not find that the statute, either facially or as applied, offends the Remedies Clause.
Justice EAKIN joins in this dissenting opinion.
. A sponsor of the Senate bill underlying Section 1929.1 explained the purposes of the legislation as follows:
It is now evident that as an unforeseen consequence of mergers that happened in the past, Pennsylvania corporations that never themselves produced, sold, or installed Asbestos products may become subject to Asbestos-related liabilities. Similarly, the amount of assets fairly available to satisfy those Asbestos-related liabilities may have become unfairly and unjustly enlarged. There is an unprecedented avalanche of Asbestos-related claims made in the United States today. What has been described by the U.S. Supreme Court as an elephantine mess that the court has called out for legislative solutions. In view of this historically unprecedented situation, it is an essential governmental interest and matter of public policy that the amount of assets available to satisfy Asbestos-related claims be fairly limited to the value of assets of the person or company that actually caused the damage through the production, sale, or installation of Asbestos.
Pa. Legis. Journal—Senate 1231 (Dec. 11, 2001).