Pennsylvania Supreme Court Drops Parallel Citation Requirement

West Publishing (now Thomson Reuters) took over publication of the Pennsylvania Reports forty years ago. The headnotes, key numbers, and other editorial interventions of that series of books have, ever since, been drawn straight from the National Reporter System.  However, Pennsylvania Reports page and volume numbers remained independent of those that identify Pennsylvania decisions in the Atlantic Reporter. Because of that divergence the state’s rules of appellate procedure required parallel case citations of Pennsylvania decisions. Explaining that this did not impose an unreasonable burden on the bar, the rule’s Official Note explained:

Counsel having available the Atlantic Reporter can readily obtain the official citation from cross-reference sheets ordinarily pasted on the flyleaf of each Atlantic Reporter volume; counsel having the official reports available can obtain the Atlantic Reporter citation from cross-references available in Shepard’s Pennsylvania Citations – Case Edition or the National Reporter Blue Book.

“Cross-reference sheets … pasted on the flyleaf of each Atlantic Reporter volume”! That was a different era. Today, because volume and page number pairs extracted from either reporter will retrieve the cited case from all online research services used by Pennsylvania judges and attorneys the requirement serves no purpose. Last month the Pennsylvania Supreme Court removed it (and the portion of the Official Note quoted above).

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No longer will attorneys have to cite to the still nominally “official” Pennsylvania Reports. It remains to be seen whether Pennsylvania’s appellate judges will themselves drop the unnecessary parallel cites. Thomson Reuters has slashed the price for a full set of the Pennsylvania Reports from $2,790 to $2,232.00.
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They do look handsome on the shelf.

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