Why has there been such consternation about plaintiff’s choice of forum in our state courts? Is it because the parties being sued have a righteous legal basis for their objection? No. Instead the claim is that the victims of corporate neglect have inappropriately filed lawsuits in venues that are terribly burdensome to these business entities. But we all know that’s not the real reason this battle has heated up. Every one of us that practices in the commonwealth knows that plaintiffs counsel follow the venue rules permitting the filing of lawsuits in certain metropolitan venues because these courts have historically moved cases more quickly to resolution, and because jurors may be more inclined to find for the injured party. We also know that defense counsel file motions to transfer many of these cases not because it’s truly inconvenient but because defendants assume that rural venues are less favorable to plaintiffs and more favorable to corporate parties. Despite the underlying motivations, or perhaps because of them, the legal grounds for a request to change venue based upon “forum non conveniens” has evolved into a war of words in which our trial courts are asked to decide whether the plaintiff’s selected forum is “vexatious” or “oppressive,” or merely “inconvenient” to the defendant.

This battle of words led one attorney to recently remark in an interview with The Legal Intelligencer that a recent panel decision of the Pennsylvania Superior Court made “an important corrective decision that applies a reasonable measure to determine whether plaintiffs’ forum is burdensome.” See The Legal Intelligencer, Nov. 1, 2023. Rather than quibble over that conclusion, it seems more helpful to recount this recent case and how it fits in with our jurisprudence, including another Superior Court decision decided by a different panel just a few days earlier.