Opinion
J-A23014-17 No. 490 EDA 2017
12-15-2017
SHIREETA TURNER, IND & AS ADMINISTRATRIX OF THE ESTATE OF LAMIYAH GRAVES, DECEASED AND AS PARENT& NATURAL GUARDIAN OF SAMIM HICKS-TURNER, SAMAD TURNER & RASHIRAH MUHAMMAD v. HELEN OF TROY, L.P. INTERMATIC, INC. CAMBRIDGE BEAUTY SUPPLY, INC. TAE E. LEE, BELSON PRODUCTS, APPLICA CONSUMER PRODUCTS, INC: HELEN OF TROY CORPORATION APPEAL OF: LAMONT GRAVES
NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37
Appeal from the Order December 29, 2016
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Civil Division at No(s): No. 02193 December Term 2013 BEFORE: PANELLA, J., DUBOW, J., and FITZGERALD, J. JUDGMENT ORDER BY PANELLA, J.
Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court. --------
Lamiyah Graves was seven years old when she died in a fire at her mother's home in New Jersey. Her mother, Shireetta Turner, filed suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas against the manufacturers of a curling iron and power strip she believed to be the cause of the fire. Prior to trial, all parties reached a global settlement subject to approval of distribution of the funds under the Rules of Civil Procedure and Pennsylvania's intestacy statute. The rules provided that the settlement proceeds arising from the wrongful death claim would be distributed to Lamiyah's parents equally. See 20 Pa.C.S.A. § 2103.
Shortly thereafter, Turner filed a petition seeking to have Appellant, Lamont Graves, Lamiyah's father, excluded from the distribution of the settlement funds. Under Pennsylania's forfeiture statute, a parent who fails to adequately support a child for at least a year prior to the child's death has no right to a distribution from the child's estate. See 20 Pa.C.S.A. § 2106(b)(1).
At the hearing on Turner's petition, Graves testified he had seen his daughter only twelve or thirteen times in the last six years of her life. See N.T., Hearing, 12/22/16, at 21. When asked when he had most recently seen his daughter, he identified only one meeting in the year before her death. See id., at 36, 49-50.
Graves admitted he had only ever offered minimal monetary support for Lamiyah, and had never sought to have legal visitation with her. See id., at 9-13, 25. In the year prior to Lamiyah's death, he provided "maybe about a hundred, $150" to her mother for Lamiyah's support. Id., at 12.
After considering both Graves's testimony and other evidence before it, the court concluded Graves had failed to provide support to Lamiyah in the year before her death and determined he had therefore forfeited any right to a distribution from Lamiyah's estate. Graves then filed this timely appeal.
On appeal, Graves argues, under various guises, that Turner's failure to keep him apprised of his daughter's whereabouts rendered his failure to support Lamiyah reasonable. Our standard in reviewing decisions of the orphans' court is as follows:
The findings of a judge of the orphans' court division, sitting without a jury, must be accorded the same weight and effect as the verdict of a jury, and will not be reversed by an appellate court in the absence of an abuse of discretion or a lack of evidentiary support. This rule is particularly applicable to findings of fact which are predicated upon the credibility of the witnesses, whom the judge has had the opportunity to hear and observe, and upon the weight given to their testimony. In reviewing the orphans' court's findings, our task is to ensure that the record is free from legal error and to determine if the orphans' court's findings are supported by competent and adequate evidence and are not predicated upon capricious disbelief of competent and credible evidence.
When the trial court has come to a conclusion through the exercise of its discretion, the party complaining on appeal has a heavy burden. It is not sufficient to persuade the appellate court that it might have reached a different conclusion if, in the first place, charged with the duty imposed on the court below; it is necessary to go further and show an abuse of the discretionary power. An abuse of discretion is not merely an error of judgment, but if in reaching a conclusion the law is overridden or misapplied, or the judgment exercised is manifestly unreasonable, or the result of partiality, prejudice, bias or ill-will, as shown by the evidence [of] record, discretion is abused. A conclusion or judgment constitutes an abuse of discretion if it is so lacking in support as to be clearly erroneous.
We are not constrained to give the same level of deference to the orphans' court's resulting legal conclusions as we are to its credibility determinations. We will reverse any decree based on palpably wrong or clearly inapplicable rules of law. Moreover,
we are not bound by the chancellor's findings of fact if there has been an abuse of discretion, a capricious disregard of evidence, or a lack of evidentiary support on the record. If the lack of evidentiary support is apparent, reviewing tribunals have the power to draw their own inferences and make their own deductions from facts and conclusions of law. Nevertheless, we will not lightly find reversible error and will reverse an orphans' court decree only if the orphans' court applied an incorrect rule of law or reached its decision on the basis of factual conclusions unsupported by the record.In re Paxson Trust I , 893 A.2d 99, 112-113 (Pa. Super. 2006) (citations and quotation marks omitted).
We have reviewed the briefs of the parties and the certified record pursuant to this standard, and conclude the opinion authored by the Honorable Matthew D. Carrafiello adequately addresses the issues raised by Graves on appeal. See Opinion Sur Appeal, 3/24/17, at 1-12. We therefore adopt its reasoning as our own, and affirm on that basis.
Order affirmed. Judgment Entered. /s/_________
Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary Date: 12/15/17
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