A relatively new form of waiver is being raised with increasing frequency, and appellate practitioners in Pennsylvania should be aware of it. The gist of these holdings is that, even when an appellant otherwise jumps through all the preservation hoops required by relevant statutes and rules, waiver can still occur if the court does not consider the point to have been argued at sufficient length, or with sufficient coherence. Since no formal standards for either exist, this type of waiver is especially unpredictable, as it is lies entirely in the subjective eyes of the judicial beholder. So beware.

That “bald allegations of error” result in waiver has always been true, e.g., Collins v. Cooper, 746 A.2d 615, 619 (Pa. Super. 2000). But the current emphasis on inadequate argument as a basis of waiver is grounded in Pa. R.A.P. 2119 which describes the “argument” section of an appellate brief: