J-A27011-17
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
ANDREAS M. SCHILIT, IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
PENNSYLVANIA
Appellant
v.
EQT CORPORATION A/KA EQUITABLE
RESOURCES, INC. A/K/A PEOPLE
NATURAL GAS COMPANY, LLC,
DUQUESNE LIGHT CO., JRD
DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC, JEFF
RECK, SUE YENCIK, ARBORS
MANAGEMENT, BERNSTEIN LAW FIRM PC
A/K/A BERNSTEIN-BURKLEY PC, JAMES
WALLACE AND JOHN R. DEKLEWA,
Appellees No. 1915 WDA 2016
Appeal from the Order Entered November 18, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County
Civil Division at No(s): No. GD 14-008994
BEFORE: BENDER, P.J.E., SHOGAN, J., and MUSMANNO, J.
MEMORANDUM BY BENDER, P.J.E.: FILED JANUARY 4, 2018
Appellant, Andreas M. Schilit, appeals pro se from the trial court’s
November 18, 2016 order dismissing his fourth amended complaint with
prejudice. After careful review, we conclude that Schilit has waived all of the
issues he raises herein. Therefore, we affirm.
The facts underlying this case are not necessary to our disposition of
Schilit’s appeal. The trial court summarized the pertinent procedural history
of this case, as follows:
On February 23, 2015, [the trial court] sustained
preliminary objections to [Schilit’s] third amended complaint.
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[The court] determined that the complaint failed to conform to
Pa[.]R.C.P. 1019 in that it was not in a concise and summary
form and because [Schilit] had neglected to attach a necessary
writing to the complaint. Schilit’s third amended complaint had
contained more than 800 paragraphs, few of which were
themselves concise. Additionally, multiple causes of action had
been pled within individual counts. By way of example, Count I,
II and V of the third amended complaint, were captioned,
respectively: “Waste, Maladministration, Breach of Fiduciary
Duty, Violation of a Statute, Conversion, Negligence”; "Emotional
Distress, Degradation, Humiliation, Damage to Property”; and
“Negligence, Breach of Contract and Unjust Enrichment[.”]
Further, Schilit repeated averments contained within one count
of the third[]amended complaint elsewhere in that complaint,
albeit sometimes slightly altered.
The function of a complaint is to concisely inform a
defendant of the essentials of a cause of action, not to burden
the defendant with repetitive averments or, worse, to restate
prior averments with slight variation. Accordingly, the
third[]amended complaint had been dismissed. [The court]
granted leave to amend, with specific instructions to Schilit,
however, that any amended complaint must conform to Rule
1019 and “shall not repeat any allegations set forth in any prior
count[.”]
Schilit thereafter filed a fourth amended complaint.
Preliminary objections followed from the eight defendants, each
asserting that Schilit had not complied with either the February
23, 2015 order of court or the rules of civil procedure. Schilit’s
fourth amended complaint was grossly noncompliant with the
requirement that material facts be pled in a concise and
summary form and that each paragraph be confined as far as
practicable to only one material allegation. Nor did Schilit
conform to the requirement to state each cause of action in a
separate count. Additionally, Schilit appended to the fourth
amended complaint an affidavit bearing the case caption and
signed by him which set forth averments of fact that had been
contained in the body of [his] third amended complaint. A large
portion of that which Schilit had excised from the third amended
complaint to achieve the reduction that had been directed by
[the court’s] order dismissing that complaint reappeared in the
body of the affidavit attached to the fourth[]amended complaint.
Of course, shifting allegations from numbered counts within the
body of the complaint to an affidavit attached to the complaint
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does not bring an objectionably cumbrous complaint into
compliance with the pleading requirements for civil actions.
During the pendency of preliminary objections to the
fourth amended complaint, Schilit filed a fifth amended
complaint, which expanded the fourth amended complaint and
also continued to include the affidavit. Filing and serving a fifth
amended complaint arguably rendered the fourth amended
complaint, as well any pending preliminary objections thereto,
moot pursuant Pa[.]R.C.P. 1028(c)(1). Defendants responded to
the filing of a fifth amended complaint by individually filing
motions to strike that amended complaint or by joining in such
motions. Among the contentions set forth in the several motions
to strike was that Schilit, in filing his fifth amended complaint,
had not complied with the spirit of Pa[.]R.C.P. 1028(c)(1), but
had simply submitted another equally noncompliant complaint,
further burdening defendants.
In response to the contentions that the fifth[]amended
complaint had been filed to further harry defendants rather than
to cure errors in the prior complaint, Schilit argued that he had
altered the prior complaint “only as absolutely necessary[.”] As
to non-corporate defendants in particular, Schilit insisted that he
had added no new allegations in the fifth[]amended complaint
and, therefore, had not further burdened such defendants. That
response is disingenuous. Because a general denial is not
available to defendants, each defendant must examine the
entirety of each new pleading, reading and analyzing an 80-90-
page pleading on each revision. There was no evident good
purpose served by filing the fifth amended complaint; little by
way of additional pertinent fact[s] appeared in that complaint.
No version of the complaint in this matter has been concise
nor have the allegations that have been set forth within any
version of the complaint been stated in summary form.
Accordingly, by order dated December 7, 2015, [the trial court]
dismissed Schilit’s fifth amended complaint pursuant to
[Appellees’] contentions that it did not conform to the
requirements of Pa.R.C.P. 1028(c)(1) and, so, did not render the
prior complaint moot. [The court] then considered objections to
the fourth amended complaint, sustained those objections and
dismissed the complaint. Schilit appealed from that December
7, 2015 order.
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One of the named defendants, James Wallace, had not
filed preliminary objections to Schilit’s fourth amended
complaint. Nor, upon receiving notice of appeal from Schilit, did
[the court] make an explicit determination that an immediate
appeal as to fewer than all defendants would facilitate resolution
of the entire case. Accordingly, the order from which Schilit
appealed could not be considered a final order under Pa.R.A.P.
341(c). See, Robert H. McKinney, Jr., Associates, Inc. v.
Albright, 632 A.2d 937, 939, 429 Pa. Super. 440, 443 (Pa.
Super.[] 1993). Accordingly, the Superior Court quashed the
appeal by order dated October 20, 2016.
Thereafter, on October 25, 2016, Defendant Wallace filed
preliminary objections to Schilit’s fourth amended complaint.
[The court] sustained those objections by order of court dated
November 18, 2016, dismissing the fourth amended complaint
with prejudice. A notice of appeal from that order followed on
December 19, 2016….
Trial Court Opinion (TCO), 2/15/17, at 2-5.
On January 3, 2017, the trial court issued an order directing Schilit to
file a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) statement. On January 24, 2017, Schilit filed a Rule
1925(b) statement that was anything but concise; instead, Schilit submitted
a 12-page document containing 136 numbered paragraphs. Many of those
paragraphs appear to be Schilit’s narrative of the history of this case, rather
than issues he seeks to raise on appeal. Schilit’s excessively lengthy Rule
1925(b) statement required the trial court to guess at what issues he
intended to raise on appeal, and then address those issues to the best of its
ability. See TCO at 5 (the court’s stating that it would “attempt to address
the five matters that Schilit seems to complain of in his Rule 1925(b) filing”).
This Court has declared that “[w]hen a court has to guess what issues an
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appellant is appealing, that is not enough for meaningful review.” Jones v.
Jones, 878 A.2d 86, 89 (Pa. Super. 2005) (citation omitted).
Additionally, our meaningful review of Schilit’s appeal is further
hampered by deficiencies in his appellate brief. Specifically, Schilit sets forth
seven claims in his “Statement of the Questions Involved,” yet his
“Argument” section is not divided into any distinct issues, thus violating
Pa.R.A.P. 2119(a). We also point out that the seven claims Schilit asserts
herein do not clearly align with the five issues that the trial court presumed
he was raising in his Rule 1925(b) statement. Thus, the trial court - through
no fault of its own - did not address some of the precise arguments Schilit
raises herein.
For all of these reasons, we conclude that Schilit has waived the issues
he seeks to raise in this appeal. See Jones, 878 A.2d at 90-91 (concluding
that the appellant waived all her issues where her Rule 1925(b) statement
was excessively lengthy, which impeded the trial court’s assessment of her
issues, and where she also disregarded “the briefing requirements contained
in the Rules of Appellate Procedure, particularly those contained in Pa.R.A.P.
2119”). Accordingly, we affirm the court’s order dismissing his fourth
amended complaint with prejudice.
Order affirmed.
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Judgment Entered.
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary
Date: 1/4/2018
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