Pennsylvania's intermediate appellate courts in 2017 wrestled with a wide variety of important issues, many of which eventually made their way to the Supreme Court. They also prepared to welcome several new judges to their ranks and to say goodbye to a few colleagues.

In November, three Democrats were elected to the state Superior Court: Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Maria McLaughlin, Judge Deborah Kunselman of Beaver County, and Carolyn Nichols, a judge on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The last open seat went to Allegheny County Magisterial District Judge Mary Murray, who barely edged out fellow Republican Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman by just under 4,000 votes.

Interim Superior Court Judge H. Geoffrey Moulton, a Democrat, and Northampton Court of Common Pleas Judge Emil Giordano, a Republican, fell just behind Stedman.

In addition to those four vacancies being filled, Republican Judge Jacqueline O. Shogan won her retention bid.

Meanwhile, interim Judges Carl Solano and Lillian Harris Ransom, both of whom declined to run for election to full terms, exited the court Dec. 31, along with Moulton.

In the Commonwealth Court race, Republican Delaware County Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon and Philadelphia Judge Ellen Ceisler, a Democrat, beat out two others for seats on the court, while the terms of interim appointees Joseph Cosgrove and Julia Hearthway ended Dec. 31.

Biggest Superior Court Rulings of 2017

The Superior Court kicked off the year with a bold—and widely bashed—statement.

In an apparent case of first impression, a divided three-judge panel ruled Jan. 12 that UPMC could not be held liable in a suit brought by several employees who were victims of identity theft after their electronically stored employment information—including dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers—was stolen from the health care provider's servers. The ruling in Dittman v. UPMC affirmed a decision from the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, which had tossed the proposed class action suit that had alleged negligence and breach of implied contract.

The appeals court held that UPMC did not owe a legal duty to protect its employees' electronically stored personal and financial information. The ruling was instantly controversial, with some cybersecurity lawyers saying it bucked national trends in data breach liability law and created a hurdle for data breach plaintiffs in state court that may prove insurmountable.

The state Supreme Court granted allocatur in the case in September.

In April, the state Superior Court affirmed a more than $55 million verdict against Honda Motors in a much-anticipated ruling that further refines Pennsylvania products liability law in the wake of the game-changing 2014 decision in Tincher v. Omega Flex.

A unanimous three-judge panel in Martinez v. American Honda Motor affirmed the verdict awarded to a man who was paralyzed when his head struck the roof of his 1999 Acura Integra as it rolled after a blowout.

Led by Superior Court Judge Alice Beck Dubow, the panel rejected challenges raised by Honda, including the company's contention that the trial court should have allowed it to introduce evidence of compliance with federal and regulatory standards. The ruling on that issue came down to whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's holding in Tincher overruled long-standing precedential decisions, including Gaudio v. Ford Motor and Lewis v. Coffing Hoist Division, Duff-Norton, which barred such information from being introduced.

Dubow said it did not.

“Tincher does not, nor did it purport to, affect the applicability of the rulings in Gaudio or Lewis,” Dubow said. “Based upon precedent that remains unchanged, the trial court determined that the proposed evidence was inadmissible. We agree.”

In July, the Superior Court tossed a $38.5 million punitive damages verdict awarded to the families of two Kraft employees who were fatally gunned down by a disgruntled co-worker.

A three-judge panel of the court ruled in Wilson v. U.S. Security Associates to grant the defendants' motion seeking judgment not withstanding the verdict with regard to the punitive damages award. The verdict was the largest award to come out of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in 2015.

On appeal, the defendants specifically contended that the plaintiffs introduced the claim for punitive damages outside the statute of limitations.

According to Judge William Platt, who wrote the precedential decision, the plaintiffs initially sought punitive damages, but later the parties stipulated to keep punitive damages out of the case. However, after the plaintiffs obtained new counsel and midway through the 2015 trial, plaintiffs were allowed to introduce the punitive damages claim.

Platt said that, while the plaintiffs may have been allowed to reinstate the punitive damages claim despite the stipulation, the trial court erred in allowing the plaintiffs to reintroduce the claim after the statute of limitations had expired.

“We conclude that the introduction of a claim for punitive damages, particularly after it had been previously withdrawn, improperly added a new cause of action after the statute of limitations had run,” Platt said in the 56-page opinion. “Appellees' arguments (and those of the trial court) to the contrary are unpersuasive.”

The ruling led to some buzz in Pennsylvania, with attorneys on both sides saying it could lead to changes when it comes to litigating punitive damages.

The overarching concern from the plaintiffs bar is that it does away with case law dating back 30 years, and will sow confusion about how attorneys should pursue punitive damages going forward.

Members of the defense, however, disagreed, saying the decision should not lead to any major changes.

“It's not unheard of that a court would deny a plaintiff the right to amend a complaint after the statute of limitations ends,” Foley, Comerford & Cummins attorney Daniel Cummins, who focuses on insurance defense, said.

But in September, the Superior Court granted the plaintiffs' request for en banc reargument in the case.

Also in September, the Superior Court ruled in Fulton Bank v. Sandquist that the applicability of a key state Supreme Court decision on negligent misrepresentation—Bilt-Rite Contractors v. The Architectural Studio—is not limited to architects, as some previously thought, but instead could pertain to any professional who provides information meant to be relied upon by a third party.

In a case in which a bank accused an accountant and his firm of negligent misrepresentation related to financial statements prepared on behalf of a commercial loan applicant, the Superior Court reversed a Chester County trial judge's ruling granting the defendants' preliminary objections.

“We find the court applied a too narrow reading to Bilt-Rite in determining that the case only concerns disputes involving an architect/contractor scenario,” Judge Paula Francisco Ott said in a Sept. 27 nonprecedential opinion. “Rather, we conclude Bilt-Rite can be applied to other factual scenarios where a party is providing professional information that is designed to be relied upon by a third party.”

Biggest Commonwealth Court Rulings of 2017

The Commonwealth Court had an equally eventful year, beginning with its January ruling that Pennsylvania's Clean Streams Law does not authorize the state Department of Environmental Protection to issue ongoing penalties against companies for the continued presence of pollutants in state waters.

The decision, at least temporarily, let a natural gas producer off the hook for potentially millions of dollars in ongoing penalties related to pollution caused by fracking leaks.

The court's precedential ruling in EQT Production v. Department of Environmental Protection came on remand from the state Supreme Court. The justices ruled 3-1 in January 2016 that EQT Production Co. could challenge the DEP's interpretation of the Clean Streams Law before the Commonwealth Court, rather than proceeding before the Environmental Hearing Board.

The DEP appealed and the Supreme Court again agreed to take up the case. The state made the rare move of enlisting a ­lawyer from outside the agency—and, even more unusually, from outside the state—to argue the case for the DEP: veteran Washington, D.C., litigator Jonathan S. Massey, whose resume includes representing former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 Florida election litigation.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in late November.

Also in January, the Commonwealth Court issued an en banc ruling holding that the concept of common-law forfeiture does not exist in Pennsylvania.

The unanimous court found in Commonwealth v. Irland that the state government has no legal basis, absent statutory authority, for seizing so-called derivative contraband.

“Based upon our research, the commonwealth's organic law, namely Article 9, Sections 18 and 19 of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, denounces and effectively abolishes any notion of common law forfeiture and that the predominate, if not unanimous, weight of the authority has determined that common law forfeiture never made it across the seas to America,” the court said.

The state Supreme Court heard arguments in Irland in late November.

In April, the Commonwealth Court held that an unconventional gas well that produces fewer than 90,000 cubic feet of gas per day during one month of a calendar year does not need to pay impact fees. The decision required the court to parse the definition of the word “any” in a portion of Act 13 defining a “stripper well.”

A split en banc panel found March 29 in Snyder Brothers v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission that the General Assembly intended “any” to mean “one,” rather than “every,” when it said a stripper well is one that falls below the threshold “during any calendar month.” Stripper wells, as opposed to “vertical gas wells,” are not required to pay impact fees. The case attracted the attention of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association, which was an intervenor on behalf of Snyder Brothers Inc.

“Viewing the plain language of the statutory provision in a common sense fashion, we agree with petitioners that the word 'any' in the definition of 'stripper well' is unambiguous and it clearly and plainly means what it says—'any month,'” Judge Patricia A. McCullough wrote for the 5-2 majority.

“Because a calendar year is a definite class consisting of 12 individual months, the most natural way to construe 'any' is to interpret it to mean at least 'one' month out of the year, no matter what or which month,” McCullough continued.

The Supreme Court granted allocatur in the case in October.

In June, the court en banc upheld Philadelphia's sweetened beverage tax, the first of its kind ever to be enacted in the nation.

The court rejected the arguments of several retailers and beverage distributors, as well as the American Beverage Association, that the tax wasn't simply a levy on sweetened drinks, but instead a “power grab” by the city that could undermine businesses and overlapped with the already existing state sales tax.

Both sides' arguments in the case centered on the point at which drinks would be taxed—with distributors saying it's a sales tax and attorneys for the city government insisting it's paid directly by distributors, not at the cash register.

In upholding a Philadelphia judge's decision that the 1.5 cent-per-ounce tax was legal, Commonwealth Court Judge Michael H. Wojcik wrote in the en banc court's majority opinion that the beverage tax was not a sales tax and didn't violate the Sterling Act, a municipal law regulating the city's ability to collect taxes.

“The [Philadelphia Beverage Tax] taxes non-retail distribution transactions and not retail sales to a consumer,” Wojcik wrote. “As a result, the PBT does not violate the duplicative-tax prohibition in the Sterling Act or encroach upon a field pre-empted by the sales tax because the taxes do not share the same incidence and merely have related subjects.”

Only two of the seven judges disagreed with the ruling.

Also in June, an en banc panel of the appellate court ruled 4-3 that a nearly $2 million civil penalty the PUC imposed against electric distribution company HIKO Energy was not impermissibly excessive, even though it was the highest penalty that the PUC had ordered in its nearly 80-year history.

The distribution company had been hit with a $1.8 million fine for allegedly hiking prices on 5,700 customers after energy prices rose dramatically in the winter of 2014. The prices rose above the company's guaranteed rates.

The Supreme Court granted allocatur in that case in December.