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585 Pa. 389

888 A.2d 771

Commonwealth v. Schofield

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided December 29, 2005

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 2005-12-29

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[W]e reaffirm the bright-line rule first set forth in Lord that “in order to preserve their claims for appellate review, [ajppellants must comply whenever the trial court orders them to file a Statement of Matters Complained of on Appeal pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925. Any issues not raised in a Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b) statement will be deemed waived.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Commonwealth v. Wholaver

Relies on Millili v. Commonwealth, Department of Transportation, Bureau of Driver Licensing · Commonwealth v. Lord · Commonwealth v. Castillo

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2005-12-29

How this case has been cited

Cited by 57 later decisions — most recently January 2026 · most notably Commonwealth v. Castillo (2005), 2007 Pa. Super. 120 - In re L.M. (2007)

55 state decisions

360200520102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Justice SAYLOR,

¶1dissenting.

¶2For the reasons set forth in my dissenting opinion in Commonwealth v. Castillo, 585 Pa. 395, 888 A.2d 775, 2005 WL 3554867 (2005), I favor the discretionary review paradigm prevailing in the Rule 1925 setting prior to the decision in Commonwealth v. Lord, 553 Pa. 415, 719 A.2d 306 (1998). Further, under the circumstances presented here, where there has been substantial and meaningful compliance with Rule 1925(b) by a pro se litigant providing a statement of matters complained of on appeal to the trial judge, who prepared his Rule 1925(a) opinion with the benefit of such statement, I agree with Judge Klein’s dissenting position that the waiver rule should not be enforced. See Commonwealth v. Schofield, No. 519 EDA 2001, slip op., 839 A.2d 1162 (Pa.Super. Oct. 28, 2003) (Klein, J., dissenting) (“If a trial court understands the issues and has provided th[e] [appellate] court with an explanation for its order in the 1925(a) opinion, we are able to conduct meaningful appellate review and need not be con*395cerned with the timeliness of the filing of the statement. To do otherwise undermines the integrity of this court and confidence in the appellate review process.”).

¶3Accordingly, I respectfully dissent, as I would remand to the Superior Court for merits review.

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