Matthew B. Durrant

Fred Munguia pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child and two counts of sexual abuse of a child involving his daughter, and received consecutive prison sentences of three years to life and one to fifteen years. On appeal, Munguia argued that the sentencing judge should have recused himself and that the court failed to consider statutes governing probation eligibility and concurrent versus consecutive sentencing. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the sentences, holding that the judge was not required to recuse, that Munguia failed to show plain error or ineffective assistance of counsel, and that the sentence complied with Utah law.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved disputes between brothers Branson and Marvin Neff stemming from their joint construction business, a family trust, and personal altercations that led to claims including malicious prosecution, assault and battery, breach of contract, slander of title, and breach of fiduciary duty. The trial court granted summary judgment against Branson on his malicious prosecution claim, determined that neither brother was the prevailing party for attorney fees purposes, and entered JNOV against jury verdicts on the slander of title and breach of fiduciary duty claims. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the summary judgment because Branson's plea in abeyance agreement meant the criminal proceedings did not terminate in his favor, an essential element of malicious prosecution. It also affirmed the attorney fees ruling after considering the overall litigation outcomes but reversed the JNOV on slander of title, reasoning that attorney fees incurred to clear title can serve as damages in that tort, while upholding the JNOV on the fiduciary duty claim where such fees alone cannot establish damages. The matter was remanded to determine the amount of those attorney fees.

business & regulatorypropertyproceduretorts & liability

This case involves a land use dispute in which property owner Nadine Gillmor challenged Summit County's denial of her application to amend zoning ordinances in the Snyderville Basin area that restricted development of her land. The Utah Supreme Court held that Gillmor's petition for review under section 801(2)(a) of the County Land Use Development and Management Act was timely because it was filed within thirty days of the county's final decision. The court further ruled that a timely petition permits assertion of any claims related to the decision's alleged arbitrary, capricious, or illegal nature, including facial challenges to the validity of the underlying 1997 Plan and 1998 Code. The reasoning rested on the statute's text allowing district court review of county land use decisions made in the exercise or violation of CLUDMA provisions, without separate time limits for related constitutional or statutory claims.

propertyprocedurebusiness & regulatory

This case involves an employee, Chad Hudgens, who sued his employer Prosper, Inc. and supervisor Joshua Christopherson after being subjected to a waterboarding incident presented as a motivational exercise, which caused him physical and emotional harm and led him to quit his job. Hudgens asserted claims including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, wrongful termination, and intentional interference with contract. The district court granted Prosper's motion to dismiss the claims and denied Hudgens leave to amend his complaint. On appeal, the court held that the district court abused its discretion in denying the motion for leave to amend because its order failed to provide any reasons for the denial, as required when justice so requires under Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 15(a). The court therefore reversed and remanded without addressing the merits of the dismissal order.

labor & employmentproceduretorts & liability

This case involved an unlawful detainer action in which DFI Properties sought to evict GR 2 Enterprises from real property after acquiring it through a trustee's sale; the district court entered default judgment against GR 2 as a sanction for conduct it deemed sanctionable under Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 11. GR 2 appealed the default judgment and related rulings. The Utah Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, holding that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the district court's order was not final: it explicitly left unresolved the amount of attorney fees, treble damages, and other issues for later determination. Under Utah law, a judgment that does not fully resolve a pending request for attorney fees is not appealable as a final order.

propertyprocedure

This case concerned whether a police officer had statutory authority under Utah Code section 77-7-2(1) to arrest a driver for the class B misdemeanor of operating a vehicle without insurance, which requires the offense to have occurred "in the presence" of the officer, and whether drugs and paraphernalia found in a search incident to that arrest should be suppressed. The Utah Supreme Court held that the statutory phrase requires the officer to have perceived all elements of the offense firsthand through one of their physical senses. The court further ruled that, under the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Virginia v. Moore, a warrantless arrest supported by probable cause but lacking statutory authority does not violate the Fourth Amendment, so evidence from the search need not be excluded.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involves a dispute among siblings over ownership of farmland in Utah that their father transferred via warranty deed to the oldest brother, Donald, shortly before his death from cancer. The other siblings claimed the transfer was intended to create a family trust to help the father qualify for welfare assistance, with Donald holding the land for the family's benefit, and they had contributed to the farm's maintenance and profitability over decades. The district court found unjust enrichment and imposed a constructive trust in favor of the siblings, but the court of appeals reversed, holding that a wrongful act was required. The Utah Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals, ruling that unjust enrichment alone can support a constructive trust in this context without needing to show wrongful conduct, as the unique requirements from prior precedent like Wilcox did not apply here.

propertyfamily law

This case concerns a petition for extraordinary writ by an association of members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints challenging a 2006 district court order that modified the United Effort Plan Trust, a charitable trust originally formed in 1942 by a fundamentalist religious group and restated in 1998. The petitioners argued that the modification and the court's subsequent administration of the trust were unconstitutional and violated Utah law. The Utah Supreme Court held that the claims regarding trust modification were barred by the equitable doctrine of laches because of the nearly three-year delay in bringing the challenge and the prejudice to numerous parties who had relied on the modification through various transactions. All but one of the remaining claims regarding trust administration were similarly barred by laches due to the same delay and prejudice, while the final claim was dismissed as not ripe for adjudication.

religious libertypropertyprocedure

In this case, Ronnie Lee Gardner, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1985, filed a post-conviction petition in 2010 after his federal appeals ended, raising new constitutional challenges to his sentence that had not been presented in prior proceedings. The State sought summary judgment, arguing the claims were untimely and barred under post-conviction statutes because Gardner had opportunities to raise them earlier but did not. The district court granted the motion, and on appeal the Utah Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that the claims could have been brought in prior state post-conviction actions many years earlier and that Gardner failed to show any injustice requiring an exception to the procedural rules. The court declined to reach the merits of the underlying claims, including a Lackey claim regarding prolonged death-row incarceration.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved property owners in the North Hayden area suing Roosevelt City after the city began pumping water from wells in the Neola-Whiterocks aquifer starting in 1990, which lowered the local water table and made irrigation more difficult and costly for the owners' crops and livestock. The owners asserted claims for negligence, interference with their water rights, and an unconstitutional taking of their property value. The district court granted summary judgment to the city on all claims, finding them barred by statutes of limitations and, for the interference claim, by governmental immunity statutes, while also rejecting them on the merits. On appeal, the Utah Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part, determining that the continuing tort doctrine preserved the negligence claim for damages within the limitations period but left other issues like the takings and interference claims subject to the time bars or immunity.

propertyenvironmenttorts & liability

This case involved a putative father's attempt to set aside the adoption of his biological daughter, T.B., by her maternal grandparents after the natural mother consented to the adoption without his knowledge or involvement. The Utah Supreme Court held that the district court had jurisdiction over the challenge and that applying Utah's adoption statutes to terminate the father's rights without his consent did not violate his constitutional due process or equal protection rights. The court reasoned that the father had not established a sufficient parental relationship or complied with the statutory requirements for consent rights, distinguishing the facts from prior U.S. Supreme Court precedents like Quilloin v. Walcott. The decision affirmed the dismissal of the motion to set aside the adoption decree.

family law

The case involved a 17-year-old juvenile, I.R.C., who was charged with aggravated robbery after driving a co-worker to a restaurant where the co-worker committed a robbery using what appeared to be a handgun. The juvenile court bound I.R.C. over for trial as an adult under Utah's Serious Youth Offender Act after finding probable cause that he was an accomplice to aggravated robbery and that he failed to prove a retention factor showing his role was not premeditated. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed, holding that reasonable inferences from the evidence supported probable cause that I.R.C. knew of the plan to use a weapon, and that the evidence of his time to reflect on his participation satisfied the state's burden on the retention issue. The court emphasized that probable cause determinations allow for all reasonable inferences in favor of the prosecution. Topics include criminal law and procedure.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involved a group of citizens challenging Grand County's passage of an ordinance approving an amended development agreement for a large planned unit development on a mesa above the Glen Canyon Aquifer, the main source of culinary water for Moab, Utah. The citizens appealed the county council's decision to the district court after an unsuccessful administrative appeal, arguing the approval was illegal, while the county and developer sought to uphold it as a valid legislative act. The district court granted summary judgment to the county, finding the ordinance presumptively legal. On appeal, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the citizens had standing under the traditional test and that the county violated the County Land Use and Development Management Act by failing to transmit a complete record of the administrative proceedings to the district court, which precluded meaningful judicial review. The court therefore reversed the grant of summary judgment.

propertyenvironmentprocedure

This case involved neighbors, the Browns, who challenged a state Division of Water Rights permit allowing McIntyre to build a bridge across Little Cottonwood Creek on his property, claiming the structure would increase flooding, erosion, and subsidence that could damage their nearby structures; they supported the allegations with an engineering report and sought judicial review plus an injunction. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of standing, and the court of appeals affirmed, holding that the claimed future harm was too speculative and not certainly impending. The Utah Supreme Court reversed, ruling that at the motion-to-dismiss stage the court must accept the complaint's factual allegations as true and draw reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs' favor, which was enough to satisfy the traditional standing test of a distinct and palpable injury fairly traceable to the permit and redressable by the requested relief.

environmentpropertyprocedure

This case concerns a challenge to the School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration's (SITLA) approval of a land exchange in which Garfield County acquired a parcel (section 16) inside Capitol Reef National Park, originally granted to Utah for public schools, in return for other county-owned parcels. After a prior remand requiring an independent appraisal to ensure fair market value, SITLA obtained such an appraisal showing the exchanged lands were worth more than section 16, and the SITLA Board upheld the director's decision. The National Parks Conservation Association appealed, arguing breaches of fiduciary duties in the valuation process. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the independent appraisal satisfied the state's trust obligations to maximize economic benefit for school beneficiaries and that no procedural violations occurred under the governing statutes.

propertyenvironment

This case involves the Harveys' petition to disconnect their land from Cedar Hills City after the city annexed part of it for a park and the parties could not agree on future use, with the Harveys intending to join Pleasant Grove instead. The district court granted summary judgment to the city, finding disconnection prohibited under both the 2001 and 2003 versions of the Utah disconnection statute because it would create an unincorporated island. The Utah Supreme Court held that the 2001 statute applies, as the 2003 amendments made substantive changes to the disconnection criteria. Under the 2001 statute, an island is only one factor in assessing whether disconnection would materially increase burdens on the municipality, and the district court erred by not evaluating overall burdens or equity. The court reversed and remanded for that determination.

propertyprocedure

This case arose from a divorce where the wife sought to enforce an alleged agreement that she would financially support her husband through medical school in exchange for a higher standard of living afterward, asserting claims for breach of contract and unjust enrichment alongside the divorce action. The Utah Supreme Court ruled that the unjust enrichment claim was barred by its earlier decision in Martinez v. Martinez rejecting equitable restitution in such student-support scenarios, but that the breach-of-contract claim was not precluded and could proceed if brought within the divorce proceedings. The core reasoning was that express contracts differ from the equitable remedies rejected in Martinez, and Utah divorce statutes expressly authorize courts to consider spousal support contributions when awarding alimony and dividing obligations. The court therefore affirmed dismissal of the unjust enrichment claim while reversing dismissal of the contract claim.

family law

The case involved Thomas Anthony's petition to the Utah Supreme Court for a waiver of the rule requiring graduation from an ABA-accredited law school to sit for the Utah bar exam. Anthony had graduated from a California-accredited school in 1980, been admitted to the California bar, and practiced law there for over two decades after receiving assurances from the Utah Bar about eligibility. The court granted the waiver, finding that Anthony's long record of competent practice demonstrated his fitness to practice in Utah and that the standard appeals process would be futile since the Bar lacked authority to waive the rule. The court also referred the matter to the Bar and its rules committee to develop standards and procedures for future waiver requests. The topics are business & regulatory and procedure.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved the State of Utah, through the School and Institutional Trust Land Administration, seeking to quiet title to mineral rights in school trust lands conveyed by patent in 1912 and to recover damages from subsequent mineral leases, nearly 90 years after the conveyance. The defendants were successors in interest who had paid taxes and treated the property as their own since the 1930s. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for the defendants, holding that the claims were barred by the seven-year statute of limitations in Utah Code section 78B-2-201. The court reasoned that the State's constitutional duties as trustee over school trust lands do not exempt it from this generally applicable limitations period on actions involving real property.

propertyprocedurefederal power

The case concerned a challenge by escort agencies and erotic dance clubs to a Utah statute imposing a 10% gross receipts tax on sexually explicit businesses where employees perform nude or partially nude services and on escort services providing compensated companionship. The court upheld the tax provisions applying to nude performances as constitutional, finding them to be a content-neutral regulation of conduct that imposed only minimal burdens on protected expression under First Amendment standards. It struck down the escort service provisions as unconstitutionally vague because the statutory definitions of "escort" and "escort service" failed to provide adequate notice of what conduct was covered. The decision rested on analysis of the tax's purpose, its application to conduct rather than content, and the lack of clarity in the escort definitions.

free speechtaxesbusiness & regulatory