The greatest number of cases in Family Court that are filed and litigated throughout the commonwealth, whether in heavily populated cities and counties or rural counties, are protection from abuse cases under the Protection From Abuse Act. Unfortunately, some of the these filings are filed for leverage in other aspects of the family law case involving the same parties, or for improper motives, or in bad faith. Consequently, a provision in the PFA Act guards against this by authorizing the award of counsel fees against the filer if he files the PFA petition in bad faith. The recent Pennsylvania Superior Court case of Courtney v. Courtney, 2019 Pa. Super. 50, (Feb. 22) addresses the issue of legal fees in an alleged bad faith filing in a PFA case. Though the Superior Court does not refer to the Courtney case as a case of first impression, the case appears to be such a case.

Under the act, “abuse” is defined, in part, as follows: “the occurrence of one or more of the following acts between family or household members, sexual or intimate partners or persons who share biological parenthood: Attempting to cause or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury, serious bodily injury, rape, involuntarily deviant sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault or incest with or without a deadly weapon; placing another in reasonable fear of imminent serious bodily injury …”  Importantly, Section 6117(b) of the PFA Act provides: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon finding that an individual commenced a proceeding under this chapter in bad faith, a court shall direct an individual to pay to the defendant actual damages and reasonable attorney fees. Failure to prove an allegation of abuse by a preponderance of the evidence shall not, by itself, result in a finding of bad faith.”