Full Opinion

J-A22009-26 NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT O.P. 65.37 SKIP WAYNE A. DREIBELBIS JR. : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF : PENNSYLVANIA Appellant : : : v. : : : PRO DISPOSAL, INC. : No. 291 WDA 2026 Appeal from the Order Entered January 23, 2026 In the Court of Common Pleas of Cambria County Civil Division at No(s): 2025-5399 BEFORE: BOWES, J., OLSON, J., and MURRAY, J. MEMORANDUM BY BOWES, J.: FILED: OCTOBER 22, 2026 Skip Wayne A. Dreibelbis Jr. appeals pro se from the order denying his petition to reinstate his appeal from the judgment of the magisterial district court. We affirm. This case arises from Mr. Dreibelbis’s allegation that on June 24, 2025, the windshield of his vehicle was struck and substantially damaged by debris from a refuse truck owned and operated by Pro Disposal, Inc. (“Pro Disposal”). Mr. Dreibelbis first sought relief in the magisterial district court, but the Magisterial District Judge (“MDJ”) found in favor of Pro Disposal and against Mr. Dreibelbis. On December 1, 2025, Mr. Dreibelbis filed a complaint seeking de novo review in the Court of Common Pleas of Cambria County. On January 7, 2026, Pro Disposal submitted a praecipe to strike the appeal because Mr. Dreibelbis did not comply with the proof of service requirements to Pro Disposal, as set J-A22009-26 forth in Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 1005B. Mr. Dreibelbis opposed the request and filed a petition to reinstate the appeal. On January 23, 2026, the court denied Mr. Dreibelbis’s petition because he did not serve the MDJ as required by Rule 1005A. Mr. Dreibelbis attempted to cure this error by serving the MDJ on February 5, 2026, and filed a motion to vacate with the trial court, but the court denied the request. This appeal followed. Mr. Dreibelbis complied with the court’s order to file a concise statement pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 1925(b), and the court authored a Rule 1925(a) opinion. In this Court, Mr. Dreibelbis raises four issues: 1. Whether the trial court committed an error of law by allowing a de novo appeal from the magisterial district court to be terminated based on alleged noncompliance with [Rule] 1005A, even though Rule 1006 authorizes striking an appeal only for failure to comply with Rule 1004A or Rule 1005B. 2. Whether the Rule 1006/Rule 1005A issue is fairly comprised within the issues preserved in [Mr. Dreibelbis]’s [Rule] 1925(b) statement, where that statement challenged the legal basis for striking or refusing reinstatement under Rule 1006, challenged the handling of service and proof of service, and challenged the refusal to grant relief despite actual notice, lack of prejudice, and prompt cure. 3. Whether the trial court abused its discretion in refusing reinstatement where the notice of appeal was timely filed on December 1, 2025, the filing fee was paid, [Pro Disposal] was served by certified mail and had actual notice, [Pro Disposal]’s counsel appeared and sought to strike the appeal, service on the [MDJ] was later cured, and no concrete prejudice to [Pro Disposal] was shown. 4. Whether the February 16, 2026 order should be reversed and the do novo appeal reinstated because the trial court could not do indirectly, through denial of reinstatement, what Rule 1006 -2- J-A22009-26 does not permit directly – namely, terminate an appeal on a Rule 1005A ground. Mr. Dreibelbis’s brief at 5-6 (pagination supplied, citations altered). Since Mr. Dreibelbis’s issues are intertwined, we address them together. Furthermore, insofar as they require us to interpret the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure Governing Actions and Proceedings Before Magisterial District Judges, our standard of review is de novo. See Grimm v. Universal Medical Services, Inc., 156 A.3d 1282, 1286 (Pa.Super. 2017) (applying de novo review to the Rules of Civil Procedure). To that end, we begin with the specific rules underpinning this action, which provide in pertinent part as follows: A. The appellant shall by personal service or by certified or registered mail serve a copy of the notice of appeal upon the appellee and upon the magisterial district judge in whose office the judgment was rendered. If required by Rule 1004B to request a rule upon the appellee to file a complaint, the appellant shall also serve the rule by personal service or by certified or registered mail upon the appellee. The address of the appellee for the purpose of service shall be the address as listed on the complaint form filed in the office of the magisterial district judge or as otherwise appearing in the records of that office. If the appellee has an attorney of record named in the complaint form filed in the office of the magisterial district judge, the service upon the appellee may be made upon the attorney of record instead of upon the appellee personally. B. The appellant shall file with the prothonotary proof of service of copies of the notice of appeal, and proof of service of a rule upon the appellee to file a complaint if required to request such a rule by Rule 1004B, within 10 days after filing the notice of appeal. Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 1005 (emphasis added). Rule 1006 sets forth the sanction for non-compliance with, inter alia, Rule 1005B, and the means to have an appeal reinstated if so stricken: “Upon failure of the appellant to comply with -3- J-A22009-26 Rule 1004A or Rule 1005B, the prothonotary shall, upon praecipe of the appellee, mark the appeal stricken from the record. The court of common pleas may reinstate the appeal upon good cause shown.” Pa.R.Civ.P.M.D.J. 1006. Our review confirms that Mr. Dreibelbis does not challenge the initial strike due to his failure to abide by the proof of service requirements outlined in Rule 1005B. Instead, he attacks the court’s denial of his petition to reinstate and motion to vacate, which he avers amounted to an impermissible strike based on his non-compliance with Rule 1005A. See Mr. Dreibelbis’s brief at 12. The issue before us then centers upon the trial court’s determination that Mr. Dreibelbis failed to demonstrate good cause and its consequent refusal to reinstate the appeal. We have held that “while the phrase ‘good cause shown’ has not been precisely defined, this Court has interpreted it to require an appealing party to proffer some legally sufficient reason for reinstating the appeal.” Slaughter v. Allied Heating, 636 A.2d 1121, 1123 (Pa.Super. 1993) (cleaned up). Further, “the determination of whether good cause has been demonstrated is trusted to the trial court’s sound discretion.” Anderson v. Centennial Homes, Inc., 594 A.2d 737, 739 (Pa.Super. 1991) (cleaned up). Here, the trial court detailed in its Rule 1925(a) opinion that Mr. Dreibelbis failed to establish good cause because he never offered a reason for why he failed to serve the MDJ in accordance with Rule 1005A. Absent any explanation, the court maintained that it could “not view [Mr. Dreibelbis]’s -4- J-A22009-26 clear noncompliance with [Rule] 1005A as merely technical and non- prejudicial.” Trial Court Opinion, 3/5/26, at 7 (citations altered); see also id. at 8 (reiterating that Mr. Dreibelbis failed to meet the burden of demonstrating “good cause” because he “has provided no explanation or reasoning for the substantial delay in serving notice upon the [MDJ]”). In short, the court held that Mr. Dreibelbis “has simply failed to demonstrate that he had good cause in failing to timely serve the” MDJ and “instead continuously repeats that [Pro Disposal] did not suffer any prejudice and that [Mr. Dreibelbis] promptly cured the deficiency (once the trial court made him aware of it in the first place).” Id. at 10 (parallel parenthetical numbers and unnecessary capitalization omitted). As noted, Mr. Dreibelbis insists that refusing to reinstate the appeal because he did not comply with Rule 1005A equates to striking on that ground, which he argues is not supported by the rules. See Mr. Dreibelbis’s brief at 12. He summarizes the crux of his position in this way: If Rule 1006 does not allow an appeal to be stricken for failure to comply with Rule 1005A, the court cannot preserve the same forbidden result by saying that reinstatement is denied because Rule 1005A was not satisfied. That would let the court transform a non[-]enumerated service issue into a merits-ending forfeiture simply by changing the label from “striking” to “refusing to reinstate.” The rule text does not permit that end run. Id. (parentheses omitted). Mr. Dreibelbis contends further that there is no record evidence that the delayed service to the MDJ prejudiced Pro Disposal. Id. at 12. He focuses on -5- J-A22009-26 the proof of service issues not “blindsid[ing]” Pro Disposal and assails the court’s order denying his motion to vacate because he cured the Rule 1005A error before that order was entered. Id. at 16. He alleges that “[t]he record thus shows notice, participation, cure, and no concrete prejudice to [Pro Disposal].” Id. at 17. In further support, Mr. Dreibelbis refers us to Pa.R.Civ.P. 126, which provides for liberal reading of procedural rules. 1 Id. at 18. This Court has clarified that “Rule 126 does not require the trial court to disregard procedural defects; rather, it permits the trial court, in the exercise of its discretion, to do so where the substantive rights of the opposing party have not been prejudiced.” Slaughter, 636 A.2d at 1125 (cleaned up, emphases in original). Notwithstanding any such liberal construction, in the circumstances presented here, “the trial court must additionally consider whether [the] appellant has demonstrated good cause for reinstating the appeal in determining whether to disregard [the] appellant’s failure to comply with the rules.” Id. (cleaned up). ____________________________________________ 1 Rule 126 provides: The rules shall be liberally applied to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action or proceeding to which they are applicable. The court at every stage of any such action or proceeding may disregard any error or defect of procedure which does not affect the substantive rights of the parties. Pa.R.Civ.P. 126(a). -6- J-A22009-26 We do not read Rule 1006 as narrowly as Mr. Dreibelbis. Indeed, even he appears to grasp the “correct legal framework” for Rule 1006 in his reply brief: “Rule 1005A may be relevant to good cause and prejudice, but it is not an independent automatic strike ground and cannot be made one by merging it into Rule 1005B.” Mr. Dreibelbis’s reply brief at 12 (parentheses omitted). That is precisely what occurred here. Stated simply, the trial court did not strike the appeal for non-compliance with Rule 1005A. It denied his request to reinstate and motion to vacate that decision because he failed to establish good cause, particularly where he did not abide by part of Rule 1005A and continues to offer no explanation as to why he failed to adhere to that part of the rule. Our reading of Rule 1006 is straightforward. The first sentence sets forth specific grounds upon which a party may praecipe for striking, namely non-compliance with Rules 1004A and 1005B. Once an action has been stricken on one of those grounds, the court has the option to nevertheless reinstate the appeal if the requesting party establishes good cause. Rule 1006 does not reference compliance with any specific rules as part of demonstrating good cause, nor does it mandate reinstatement if the striking grounds are remedied. Our precedent is illustrative. In Anderson, Centennial failed to meet its burden of establishing good cause, which we summarized thusly: [It] offered no explanation to the trial court, or to this [C]ourt, for its failure to file proof of service of copies of its notice of appeal and rule to file complaint within five days after filing its notice of -7- J-A22009-26 appeal. Clearly, in attempting to demonstrate good cause for reinstating an appeal, Centennial should explain its reasons, if any, for failing to comply with the provisions which caused the appeal to be stricken. Centennial, rather than attempting to explain its reasons for not complying with [R]ule 1005B, merely claims that since it acted as diligently as possible under the circumstances and since the Andersons’ rights were not substantially affected by its noncompliance, its appeal should be reinstated. Anderson, 594 A.2d at 739. In Slaughter, we distinguished earlier precedent where good cause was shown because in those cases “the appealing party timely served the notice of appeal upon both the opposing party and the district justice and had merely failed to timely file their proofs of service or their complaint.” Slaughter, 636 A.2d at 1124 (cleaned up). Ultimately, we concluded that the court did not abuse its discretion in denying the appellant’s petition to reinstate his appeal, explaining as follows: Although [the] appellant offers no justification for its failure to comply with the rules, [the] appellant asserts that the noncompliance nonetheless should be disregarded because [the] appellee has suffered no prejudice. As recognized by this court, simply stating that the noncompliance did not substantially affect the rights of the adverse party is not alone sufficient to demonstrate good cause to reinstate the appeal. Because [the] appellant has substantially failed to comply with the procedural rules for perfecting an appeal from a judgment entered by a district justice and because [the] appellant has failed to show good cause for its procedural noncompliance, we are unable to conclude that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to reinstate the appeal in this case. Id. at 1125-26 (cleaned up). Finally, we affirmed the denial of reinstatement in Howland, Hess, Guinan & Torpey v. Perzel, 667 A.2d 1163 (Pa.Super. 1995), in part -8- J-A22009-26 because the petitioner offered no explanation as to why the wrong address was used in attempting to serve the notice of appeal on the MDJ: The trial court found that Perzel failed to comply with two essential procedural rules and failed to demonstrate “good cause” for her noncompliance. First, Perzel failed to send a copy of the notice of appeal to the [MDJ]. Perzel admits that she sent the notice of appeal to the incorrect address. . . . Perzel never explained why she sent the notice of appeal to the incorrect address. Furthermore, when she received the return receipt card, it was signed by a mailman at the Montgomery County Courthouse . . . . The return receipt did not indicate that the [MDJ] received the notice of appeal. Secondly, Perzel failed to file proof of service that she sent the notice of appeal to Howland and the District Justice. . . . [T]he [MDJ] did not receive any notice of Perzel’s appeal. One of the intended purposes of Rule 1005B is to notify the [MDJ] of the appeal since the appeal operates as a supersedeas and prevents the prevailing party from executing on the judgment. [The MDJ] was never notified in the present case that Perzel filed an appeal, thus staying the $2,899.65 judgment in Howland’s favor pending appeal. Perzel’s procedural error is more egregious than . . . other cases where this Court has excused an untimely filing of the proof of service [because] Perzel did more than fail to timely file a proof of service—she failed to effect service in the first place. Under these circumstances, we do not find . . . that the trial court abused its discretion when deciding that Perzel failed to show “good cause” for reinstating her appeal. Id. at 1165 (cleaned up, emphasis in original). Here, the trial court concluded that Mr. Dreibelbis failed to establish good cause to reinstate the appeal where he not only initially failed to properly serve the prothonotary pursuant to Rule 1005B, thereby prompting Pro Disposal to seek to strike the appeal, but also did not serve the MDJ in accordance with Rule 1005A. Moreover, he never offered any explanation as to why he failed to do so until the court notified him of the error. Indeed, he -9- J-A22009-26 has yet to offer an explanation, instead simply repeating that he cured the defect and Pro Disposal was not prejudiced. Since we have held that relying upon eventual compliance and baldly alleging non-prejudice to the non- appealing party is insufficient, we discern no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s determination that Mr. Dreibelbis failed to adduce good cause for reinstatement. See Slaughter, 636 A.2d at 1125-26; Anderson, 594 A.2d at 739-40. Accordingly, we affirm. Order affirmed. DATE: 10/22/2026 - 10 -