Appellate courts in Pennsylvania have distorted case law dealing with sovereign immunity and improperly created an arbitrary distinction for highway guardrails, an attorney argued before the state Supreme Court.
Pittsburgh attorney Mark Homyak, who is representing members of a family allegedly injured by a hazardous “spearing” guardrail, argued that his clients’ case clearly met the real property exception to the sovereign immunity statute; however, he said a wrongfully decided 2000 state Supreme Court ruling has been improperly relied on by the Commonwealth Court to arbitrarily distinguish highway guardrails from all other real property owned by the state.
