March 15, 2013, Utah Supreme Court Cases

March 15, 2013

Utah Supreme Court Cases

Goggin v. Goggin, 2013 UT 16, No. 20110356 (March 15, 2013)

Chief Justice Durrant,

This case arises out of prolonged and complicated divorce proceedings. . . . Throughout the process, Dennis has engaged in a variety of contemptuous and obstructionist acts and has repeatedly violated the court’s discovery orders. With this behavior, he successfully undermined the divorce court’s ability to obtain a complete and accurate assessment of the marital assets.

Ultimately, the divorce court awarded Tammy all of her fees and costs related to appointing a receiver and hiring expert forensic accountants. The court also awarded all of her attorney fees and out-of-pocket expenses. Further, the court awarded Tammy a disproportionate amount of the marital assets. Specifically, the court (A) credited to Tammy the full amount of the assets Dennis dissipated; (B) declined to award Dennis a credit or setoff for the value of separate property he contributed to the purchase and development of the marital residential property; and (C) declined to award him a credit or setoff for the value of managerial efforts he contributed to his businesses while the divorce was pending. Dennis appealed.

We conclude that the divorce court did not abuse its discretion1 in awarding Tammy all of the fees and costs she incurred related to the receiver and the forensic accountants. But we conclude that the court exceeded its discretion to the extent that it awarded Tammy attorney fees and out-of-pocket costs in excess of the amount Dennis actually caused her to incur. Similarly, we conclude that the court exceeded its discretion to the extent that any portion of its award was based upon its finding that Dennis had entered into, and breached, an oral contract with Tammy regarding the business they started.

With respect to the divorce court’s distribution of the marital property, we conclude that the court exceeded its discretion in awarding Tammy the full amount of dissipated assets without first estimating the maximum amount of assets that Dennis may have dissipated. Further, we conclude that the court erred in declining to consider whether Dennis was entitled to a credit or setoff for the separate property he contributed to the purchase and development of the marital residential property. Indeed, we conclude that the divorce court may have misunderstood the effect of the district court’s prior ruling in this case. But because it properly applied the doctrine of unclean hands, we conclude that the court properly exercised its discretionary authority when it declined to award Dennis a setoff or credit for his managerial contributions to his businesses.

At ¶¶ 1-4.

The Court outlines the facts and procedural posture of the case

At ¶¶ 5-25.

“The trial court in a divorce action is permitted considerable discretion in adjusting the financial and property interests of the parties, and its actions are entitled to a presumption of validity.” Accordingly, we will not disturb a district court’s apportionment of marital property “unless it is clearly unjust or a clear abuse of discretion.”  This is a “heavy burden,” and “we can properly find abuse only if no reasonable person would take the view adopted by the trial court.”12 Further, we review a court’s award of sanctions and its application of the unclean hands doctrine for abuse of discretion.

At ¶ 26.

With respect to the divorce court’s award of attorney fees and costs, the Court rules:

[T]o the extent that the court’s award of attorney fees and out-of-pocket costs exceeds the fees and costs actually caused by Dennis’s sanctionable behavior, and to the extent that any portion of the court’s award is based upon the court’s conclusion that Dennis breached an oral contract, we conclude that the divorce court overstepped the bounds of its discretion.

At ¶ 28.

The Court outlines when a Court may award attorney fees.

In general, a prevailing party may not recover attorney fees unless such an award is authorized by statute or contract.  But four sources of authority permit a court to award attorney fees or other costs in a situation where one party has been uncooperative and failed to comply with discovery requests and court orders. First, [pursuant to Section 78B-6-311 of the Utah Code (Contempt Statute)] . . . ;

Second, [pursuant to rule 37 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure a court “may impose appropriate sanctions for the failure to follow its orders, including . . . order[ing] the party . . . to pay the reasonable expenses, including attorney fees, caused by the failure.” . . . .

Third, a court may award equitable attorney fees. “[A] court has inherent equitable power to award reasonable attorney fees when it deems it appropriate in the interest of justice and equity. . . . Indeed, the power to award such fees is part of the original authority of the chancellor to do equity in a particular situation.”20 And we have recognized that “[c]ourts have exercised that inherent power in several categories of cases,” including situations where “a party acts in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons.”21 A court making an equitable award of attorney fees “must ascertain whether the equities of a given case justify the use of its inherent and discretionary power to award fees.”

Finally, a court may be able to award attorney fees as a sanction under its inherent sanction powers. It is well established that courts have inherent powers to sanction attorneys. . . .

Thus, a court’s authority to impose an award of fees as a sanction against a party who has been obstructive or contemptuous is derived from several statutes and common law doctrines. But none of those statutes or doctrines permit the amount of the award to exceed the amount of fees, costs, or injury that the other party actually incurred.

At ¶¶ 32-36.

With respect to Dennis’s remaining arguments the Court rules that the divorce court overstepped the bounds of its discretion in failing to estimate the maximum amount of assets that Dennis may have dissipated and in failing to consider whether he was entitled to a setoff or credit for the separate property he contributed to the Riverbend property, but the court did not overstep its discretion when it declined to award Dennis a setoff or credit for his managerial contributions to the Riverbend or Sundowner properties.

At ¶¶42-61.

State v. Billingsley, 2013 UT 17, No. 20110148 (March 15, 2013)

ASSOCIATE CHIEF JUSTICE NEHRING authored the opinion of the Court, in which JUSTICE DURHAM and JUSTICE PARRISH joined.

JUSTICE LEE filed a concurring opinion, in which CHIEF JUSTICE DURRANT joined.

Justice Nehring,

A jury convicted Andrea Billingsley of one count of rape, three counts of forcible sodomy, and three counts of forcible sexual abuse. The trial judge arrested the judgment and granted a new trial on all counts based on evidentiary errors and several “irregularities” that occurred during trial. The State appealed, and sought to reinstate Ms. Billingsley’s convictions. We hold that the evidentiary ruling excluding evidence of the victim’s sexual predisposition was proper and the other claimed errors and irregularities do not require reversal because they did not prejudice Ms. Billingsley. We therefore reverse the order granting a new trial and reinstate Ms. Billingsley’s convictions.

At ¶ 1.

Initially, the trial court ruled that the testimony of a teacher regarding a prior, unrelated incident involving M.M [the victim]. was inadmissible under rule 412 of the Utah Rules of Evidence and that none of the exceptions to that rule applied. In granting a new trial, the court reconsidered this decision. We hold that the trial court correctly excluded the evidence and that the fate of the excluded evidence could not justify arresting the verdict.

At ¶ 10.

Under no plausible definition of “entice” are a teenager’s unrelated sexual comments to third parties an element of the offense and thus admissible under the exception to rule 412 for “evidence whose exclusion would violate the defendant’s constitutional rights. . . . Neither party challenges the jury instructions in this case, which stated that “the ‘enticement’ of a teenager by an adult occurs when the adult uses psychological manipulation to instill improper sexual desires which would not otherwise have occurred” and

[e]nticement consists of words intended to cause a person to do something that person would not otherwise do. Factors one may consider are whether the defendant wrongfully solicited, persuaded, procured, allured, attracted, drew by blandishment, coaxed, or otherwise seduced, and did so to lure, induce, tempt, incite, or persuade a person to do a thing, or to beguile by arousing hope or desire.

Whether the jury instructions properly defined “enticement” under the statute is a question we have not been asked to answer in this appeal.  We hold that under no definition, including the one provided in the jury instructions, would the evidence of M.M.’s unrelated comment to a teacher be necessary to the determination of guilt and thus admissible under rule 412.

At ¶ 13.

The suggestion that once a teenager has engaged in other sexual activity, he cannot be enticed defies the language and the logic of the statute. Requiring the State to prove that the victim was not predisposed to engage in sexual activity of any kind would defeat the purpose of the statute, requiring an inquiry into the sexual history of teenage victims and encouraging an accused offender to attack a victim for being “predisposed” to sexual advances regardless of how egregious the defendant’s conduct was. The fact that two previous Utah cases involved victims who were sexually inexperienced does not make the victim’s sexual naiveté an element of the crime

At ¶ 14.

Utah Rule of Evidence 412 coexists harmoniously with the Confrontation Clause. Evidentiary rules that “serve[] legitimate state interests . . . may . . . justify even the severe sanction of preclusion” because “[t]he Sixth Amendment does not confer the right to present testimony free from the legitimate demands of the adversarial system.”25 In the context of sexual conduct, a state’s interest in prohibiting inquiry into a victim’s sexual history “is not in variance with the purpose of the [C]onfrontation [C]lause to advance the accuracy of the truth determining process.”26 The trial court abused its discretion when it determined that Ms. Billingsley’s right to confront witnesses against her was violated.

At ¶ 17.

The trial court’s order granting a new trial also noted four other “irregularities.”  The Court determines that they were not enough to justify granting a new trial.

“[T]rial court errors will require reversal only if [our] confidence in the jury’s verdict is undermined.”28 Defense counsel did not object or complain of any of these irregularities at trial. Nor did Ms. Billingsley raise them in her motion for a new trial. Defense counsel had good reason for ignoring these irregularities. They are clearly innocuous. The possibility that they had any influence on the jury’s verdict is remote.

At ¶ 21.

The only issue the trial court cited that could conceivably have impacted a juror is the admission into evidence of a topless photo of Ms. Billingsley. The photo was taken from Ms. Billingsley’s cell phone and enlarged to fit an 8½ x 11 inch sheet of paper. However, the photo was not one Ms. Billingsley had shown to the victims. It was placed on the phone after the charged conduct. In its order arresting judgment and granting a new trial, the court determined that the picture should have been excluded under rule 403 of the Utah Rules of Evidence because it had limited probative value29 and was unduly prejudicial. According to the trial court, “[f]or the jury to decide whether the photograph would have enticed the victims the photograph should have, at the very least, been the size of what the victims[] would have seen.” As with the other errors and irregularities, the court acknowledged that “the photograph alone was not prejudicial enough to warrant an arrest of judgment.” We agree. It is highly unlikely that the enlargement of the photo impacted the jury’s deliberations. Our confidence in the verdict, which was supported by the victims’ testimony, Ms. Billingsley’s admissions, and DNA evidence, is not undermined by the publication of a photo the jury knew was taken subsequent to the charged conduct.

At ¶ 22.

Justice Lee, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment,

I concur in the court’s disposition of this case but disagree with its decision to reach out to address an issue that is both foreclosed by the posture of this appeal and unnecessary to the judgment. Specifically, I see no basis for opining, as the court does in paragraphs 11–15, on whether consideration of a victim’s sexual predisposition is “necessary to the determination of guilt” under Utah Code section 76-5-406(11) or “defies the language and the logic of” that provision. Supra ¶¶ 13, 14.

The parties’ failure to challenge the jury instructions in this case prevents us from reaching that question.

At ¶¶ 24-25.