Six months ago, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from a Verona woman attempting to sue the parents of her son’s killer after she claimed they concealed the murder weapon.
The case, based on an unusual interpretation of Pennsylvania’s “Interference with Dead Bodies” tort, was scheduled for oral argument in Pittsburgh on Oct. 10.
But on Thursday, the justices on the court apparently changed their collective mind.
In a three-line order, the court said the appeal is “dismissed as having been improvidently granted.”
They canceled the oral argument, and the case is now closed.
The court provided no explanation for the decision. It noted that Justice David N. Wecht did not participate.
Mark Homyak, the attorney who represents T. Lee Rouse in the lawsuit, was disappointed in the decision.
“The judgment of the lower courts becomes final, and I have no remedy for my client.”
Rouse’s son, Christian Moore-Rouse, 22, was killed by Adam Rosenberg on Dec. 21, 2019.
The two men had been friends, and that day, according to police, Rosenberg invited Moore-Rouse to his Fox Chapel home.
Rosenberg shot Moore-Rouse in the back of the head, dragged his body down the driveway and hid it a few feet off the road.
It wasn’t found until March 3, 2020.
Rosenberg’s parents, Kimberly and Howard Rosenberg, found the gun after the shooting and took it to their marriage counselor, Martha Laux, police said.
She then took the gun to Allegheny County Police on Jan. 20, 2020, claiming she found it on a trail in North Park while out walking her dog.
No charges were ever filed for making false reports to police.
Rosenberg pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder — he also admitted to killing Jeremy Dentel, 28, on Feb. 15, 2020 — and is serving life in prison.
T. Lee Rouse sued Kimberly and Howard Rosenberg and Laux in December 2021, alleging that they covered up evidence of her son’s death which then delayed the police investigation and discovery of her son’s body.
The lawsuit cited Pennsylvania’s “Interference with Dead Bodies” tort, which allows a person to recover damages from one who “intentionally, recklessly or negligently removes, withholds, mutilates or operates upon the body of a dead person or prevents its proper interment or cremation.”
However, both Allegheny County Common Pleas Court and the state Superior Court ruled against Rouse, finding that because neither the Rosenbergs nor Laux ever touched Moore-Rouse’s body, the claim fails.
T. Lee Rouse then appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which appeared poised to take the case — until Thursday.
Getting the state Supreme Court to accept a case on appeal is difficult.
According to statistics from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, the appellate court accepted less than 7% of the petitions it received in 2022.
Bruce Antkowiak, who teaches law at Saint Vincent College, said it’s rare for the court to dismiss a case it’s already agreed to hear.
“It is conceivable that having looked at the briefs, the Supreme Court came to believe there really was no issue they needed to resolve,” he said. “Most likely, what they really thought was a contested issue is not.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.