Matt discusses two new cases dealing with waiver.
Hey everybody. What's up? It's Matt and David. We're back together again. I know you were all worried. This week we noticed that there were some similarities in opinions across jurisdictions. Commonwealth v. Westlake in the Pennsylvania courts shared something very important in common with United States v. Dowdell in the Third Circuit. So my good friend, Matt, here's going to enlighten us on what we need to know.
Thank you, David. That's correct. In both the Westlake and Dowdell cases, they involved waiver. One was the defendant's waiver. One was actually a waiver by the government. Now Commonwealth v. Westlake is particularly important to litigators in Pennsylvania. The rule talks about Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 579(a).
That rule tells you that you have 30 days to file an omnibus motion after arraignment. That's a small window. And in that omnibus motion, you must include all the issues you want to raise. If you don't include them. Waived. And that's what happened in Westlake. Ah, too bad.
And the United States v. Dowdell the waiver was the government's folly. There, the government filed a brief and did not mention an argument that raised at oral argument? Defendant objected. The trial court said no, no, you can't raise this argument now wasn't raised in briefing. The Third Circuit said that's correct. That's waived. And so if you're a litigator be on the lookout for government waiver, as well as your own.
All right. Well, that's good advice. I know waiver comes up in every jurisdiction in every subject matter and every practice area. So if you guys ever have any questions about it, you want to run something by us to just get our opinion. We're happy to listen. We're happy to offer our advice.
You're always welcome to schedule an appointment, to chat with us using our link on our website below. And you can also call or email. We're both here, both back in action. And we look forward to talking to you soon. And either way, we'll see you next week. Thanks for watching. Bye guys.