Pearlman Appeal
Pearlman Appeal
Dissenting Opinion
Dissenting Opinion by
filed June 30, 1960:
One sure way not to make a mistake is not to do anything. Thus, the Court of Common Pleas No. 2 of Philadelphia County handling the present case can remain safely within its ivory tower of non-criticism by refusing to touch the status quo.
Justin Pearlman was declared incompetent on September 19, 1945, and the Tradesmens Bank and Trust Company was appointed 'guardian of his estate. In June, 1959, a petition was filed asking for removal of the guardian on the basis that Pearlman had recovered from his mental illness. Hearings were held on the petition, and the court refused to discharge the guardian principally because on a previous occasion Pearlman had been declared recovered and then suffered a relapse. But there is no reason why he should be shackled to a guardian during the time that he is entirely competent to handle his affairs, only because of the remote possibility of a relapse. Joshua Logan, one of the geniuses of the Broadway stage and of Hollywood in dramatic production has had relapses of a mental condition but upon recovery he goes back to his work and his art.
The testimony of the petitioner and of the two physicians was uncontradicted. The court below may have felt that if it was erring, it was doing so on the safe side, but a court must have the formidableness to meet an issue and decide it according to the evidence. It Avould appear that the court was not being guided by the evidence but by fear of a possibility which was not justified by what was said in court. The Incompetents’ Estates Act of June 28, 1951, P. L. 612, §§321 and 323, provides the machinery for the removal of a guardian when the “incompetent of whose estate he is guardian has become competent.”
This machinery turned in vain in the court beloAV. I am in accord with what Chief Justice Maxby said in Denner v. Beyer, 352 Pa. 386, 397: “It is a serious thing to deprive any person of the control of their own property or of their right to dispose of it by will. This right Avill be judicially taken away from a person only after preponderating proof of his lack of mental capacity to manage his own business affairs. There is no such proof in this record.”
Opinion of the Court
Opinion
This is an appeal from the order of the lower Court dismissing appellant’s amended petition to remove the guardian of his estate on the ground that he had become competent.
The Incompetents’ Estates Act of 1955, re-enacted and amended July 11, 1957,
The Incompetents’ Estates Act of 1955 has recently been ably analyzed by Mr. Justice Benjamin R. Jones in Myers Estate, 395 Pa. 459, 150 A. 2d 525, and further analysis is unnecessary.
We find no clear abuse of discretion nor error of law in the order, which is affirmed on the opinion of Judge Sporkin.
P. L. 794, 50 PS §§3101-3801 (Supp. 1958). The short title of this Act is The Incompetents’ Estates Act of 1955. Even stranger', The Incompetents’ Estates Act of 1955 was enacted February 28, 1956, P, L. 1154. The 1957 Act re-enacted the so-called Act of 19.55 and amended it.
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