In the past couple of months, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has decided two waiver decisions of great interest to appellate practitioners. In both cases, the court expanded the scope of waiver.
In Jones v. Ott, 191 A.3d 782 (Pa. 2018), the court addressed the recurrent question of the steps necessary at trial to preserve objections to the trial court's jury instructions. The plaintiff had filed proposed points for charge, but the plaintiff neither objected following an untranscribed charging conference nor after the charge itself. On appeal, the plaintiff’s position was that an objection to the charge was adequately preserved “by docketing written proposed points for charge and raising the issue in a post-trial motion.”
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