At the start of the year, two longtime Commonwealth Court judges were transferred over to the Pennsylvania Superior Court to help the fellow intermediate appellate court handle its busy caseload.

Senior Judges Dan Pellegrini, 73, and James Gardner Colins, 72, were both transferred from the Commonwealth Court to the Superior Court beginning Jan. 1.

The transfers bring the busy Superior Court's bench to a total of 20 judges, with 14 commissioned judges and six senior judges. The Commonwealth Court is now half the size, with nine commissioned judges and one senior judge.

According to documents obtained by The Legal, then-President Judge Susan Peikes Gantman made the request for additional senior judges in September, and Chief Justice Thomas Saylor approved the request soon after. Gantman, whose terms as the court's president judge ended last year, had cited “caseload” as the reason for the request. The documents indicate the two are set to sit as senior judges on the Superior Court at least until June 30.

“Resources are allocated within the court where they are most needed,” Stacey Witalec, spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, said about the transfers.

Caseload statistics from the AOPC give a clearer picture of that need.

According to the 2017 numbers, which are the most recently available, the Superior Court concluded 8,060 cases during the year, and 8,019 new appeals were filed with the court. That number is up slightly from the 7,965 filed and 7,884 concluded during 2016, but, according to the numbers, the caseload has hovered between nearly 7,600 and slightly more than 8,100 over the past seven years.

The Commonwealth Court has seen slightly less than half the caseload as the Superior Court, court statistics say.

According to the numbers, in 2017 the Commonwealth Court saw 3,661 new cases filed, and it disposed of 3,158 cases. Caseloads for the Commonwealth Court varied between about 3,800 and 4,000 each year, with 2017 giving the court its lowest caseload since 2011, according to court statistics.

The Superior Court also saw significant changes over the past year, with four new judges joining the court beginning in 2018 and Senior Judges James J. Fitzgerald III and William Platt stepping down from the bench.

Despite the different legal areas that the two courts deal with, practitioners said they don't have any concerns about the transfers of Pellegrini and Colins.

“What's nice about these two particular senior judges is that they're both very experienced appellate court judges and they're both very familiar with Pennsylvania law, of course,” appellate attorney Howard J. Bashman said. “I think being on the Superior Court versus the Commonwealth Court is not going to present any huge difficulties for these two, even though in various ways the caseload will be different.”

The Commonwealth Court handles litigation dealing with government agencies, and the Superior Court handles nearly everything else, with a significant portion of its caseload stemming from criminal cases. The Commonwealth Court also handles the bulk of the election law challenges throughout the state.

Election law attorney Adam Bonin said both Pellegrini and Colins were experts in handling election cases, and so years of experience handling these matters will leave with them.

“You always knew when a case was assigned to one of them that it was going to be professionally handled and resolved on the facts and the law,” he said. “Because of the experience that both of them have on election law—and they had an understanding of what they were seeing and understood the political context—even when you lost before them, you always knew you got a fair hearing.”

Regardless of the losses of Colins and Pellegrini, he said he is still very confident in the Commonwealth Court when it comes to election law.

When it comes to the Superior Court's gains, Bashman said practitioners should be prepared.

“These are two smart and thoughtful judges, and I think people that come before them at oral argument will need to be prepared to answer any tough questions the case presents,” Bashman said.