The state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled last week that objectors to former congressional candidate Mike Doyle, R-Plum, do not need to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees accrued by Doyle over a process of challenging the candidate’s nominating petitions.
The ruling overturned a previous decision by Commonwealth Court, and Chief Justice Debra Todd wrote in an opinion that Commonwealth Court “abused its discretion” in ordering objectors to pay Doyle’s legal fees.
Doyle, who recently won an election as a district judge in the Plum and Oakmont area, said he had no comment on the ruling.
Doyle is not related to former U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, a longtime Democrat who represented the area for decades.
In March 2022, Doyle submitted nominating petitions for a race in the Republican Primary Election for Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, which includes the city of Pittsburgh, suburban Allegheny County communities, as well as Westmoreland County communities such as Murrysville, North Huntingdon, Penn Township, Sewickley Township and parts of Hempfield. Doyle lost in the general election to now-U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale.
A week later, two registered Republican voters challenged Doyle’s petition signatures, claiming enough were invalid and Doyle did not have the required 1,000 valid signatures to run for office. Eric Sloss and Sandor Zelekovitz challenged Doyle’s signatures and filed their challenge in Commonwealth Court, a statewide appellate court.
After a slow and arduous process of checking hundreds of signatures, the Commonwealth Court made multiple rulings in Doyle’s favor regarding disputed signature lines; both parties agreed he possessed the requisite 1,000 valid signatures.
Commonwealth Court then issued an order awarding Doyle $78,117 in legal fees stemming from the challenge. It ruled that the challengers were too slow to act in their challenge and overall acted in “bad faith,” since Doyle was the only Republican candidate in the primary.
Sloss and Zelekovitz appealed that ruling and the Supreme Court sided with them. The state’s top court determined the Commonwealth Court’s assessments — that the objectors pursuing this litigation was “dilatory, obdurate, vexatious and in bad faith” — was unfounded.
The order making Sloss and Zelekovitz pay Doyle’s legal fees was reversed.
Justices David Wecht, Sallie Updyke Mundy and Kevin Brobson joined the opinion. Justices Christine Donohue and Kevin Dougherty did not participate in the consideration or decision of this matter.
