Patla v. UCBR - Cmwlth. Court - December 18, 2008
http://www.courts.state.pa.us/OpPosting/Cwealth/out/823CD08_12-18-08.pdf
The court granted the UCBR's motion to strike the appeal for failure of the petition for review to state appellant's objections with specificity, as required by Pa. R.A.P. 1513. The petition "merely that the determinations in the UCBR’s order were “not supported by the record,” and “that there is no legal basis for the UCBR’s denial of benefits.”
The court said that those objections did not "fairly embrace the willful misconduct issue, and failed to identify specific findings of fact that are allegedly unsupported by substantial evidence. Pearson v. UCBR, 954 A.2d 1260, 1263 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2008)."
To determine if a petition for review states a claimant’s objections with sufficient specificity, the court said that it looks to Pa. R.A.P. (Rule) 1513(d), which requires that a petition for review contain “a general statement of the objections to the order or other determination.” The general statement “will be deemed to include everysubsidiary question fairly comprised therein.” Rule 1513(d)(6).
However, more than a bare restatement of the scope of review is required, as the court held in Deal v. UCBR, 878 A.2d 131 (Pa. Cmwlth. 2005). In Deal, the court dismissed the petition for review because it stated only that the Board "was guilty of an error of law in deciding to reverse the decision of the Referee and deny benefits, and that there was a "a lack of substantial evidence to support the decision of the Board." It "did not contain any statement that fairly embraced the legal issue in the case and did not identify specific findings that were allegedly unsupported by substantial evidence; thus, the petition contained no issues for review."
"In the instant case, Claimant’s petition suffers from the same insufficiencies as the petition in Deal. Claimant’s Claimant’s Petition for Review offers no statement that this Court could deem “fairly embraces” willful misconduct, nor does it set forth what findings of fact were unsupported by the evidence. Accordingly, although developed in Claimant’s brief, his arguments regarding the issues will not be considered by this Court on appeal. See Deal."
In addition the claimant did not address any of the issues raised in the UCBR’s motion to strike the petition for review, despite the court’s direction to do so.
