This case involved Anthony Rienzi's attempt to seek post-conviction relief after his conviction for third-degree murder and criminal conspiracy arising from a gang attack that resulted in a death. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed whether an untimely second petition under the Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) could be treated as an amendment to a timely first petition that had been withdrawn. The court decided to reverse the Superior Court's order, which had remanded for an evidentiary hearing, and upheld the dismissal of the petition. The core reasoning was that the PCRA's one-year filing deadline is jurisdictional and cannot be extended through equitable tolling or by recharacterizing the second petition as an amendment, as the deadline had passed without any applicable exception being met.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved The Birth Center suing its professional liability insurer, St. Paul Companies, for bad faith refusal to settle an underlying medical malpractice lawsuit within policy limits despite multiple judicial recommendations and assessments showing significant risk of an excess verdict. The jury found by clear and convincing evidence that St. Paul's conduct caused The Birth Center $700,000 in compensatory damages from lost business, and the trial court granted the insurer judgment notwithstanding the verdict, but the Superior Court reversed and the Supreme Court affirmed. The court held that an insurer breaches its contractual and fiduciary duties by refusing to settle without a bona fide belief in a good possibility of winning and is liable for the insured's known or foreseeable compensatory damages that reasonably flow from that bad faith, even when the insurer later pays an excess verdict to avoid punitive damages.

business & regulatorytorts & liability