The case involved Baseline Financial Services suing Ruth Madison for breach of an installment contract after she stopped payments on a financed vehicle in 2006; the contract included an optional acceleration clause allowing the creditor to declare the full debt due upon default. The superior court granted Madison summary judgment, ruling that the four-year statute of limitations began running when the bank internally charged off the debt as uncollectible in August 2006. The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the claim accrued instead upon the bank's repossession of the vehicle in December 2007, which constituted the affirmative act exercising the acceleration option. The court reasoned that, under precedent such as Navy Federal Credit Union v. Jones, an internal write-off is merely an accounting measure that does not trigger the limitations period for future installments, whereas repossession provides the required overt notice of acceleration. The matter was remanded for further proceedings.
In this case, Sylvia Assyia sued State Farm for breach of contract after the insurer paid only $2,000 of her $50,000 uninsured motorist policy limits following a 2008 accident caused by an uninsured driver, despite her documented losses exceeding $52,000. State Farm appealed the superior court’s award of attorneys’ fees and costs to Assyia under A.R.S. § 12-341.01(A), arguing that her claim sounded in tort because the insurer was merely stepping into the shoes of the uninsured motorist. The Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the fee and cost award, holding that the action arose out of contract. The court reasoned that the duty allegedly breached was created by the insurance policy itself and would not exist but for that contractual relationship, making fee-shifting under the statute appropriate. Assyia was also awarded taxable costs as the successful party in the contested proceeding.
This case was a judicial foreclosure action brought by Helvetica Servicing against Michael Pasquan after default on a $3.4 million loan secured by his Paradise Valley residence, with the central dispute being whether Arizona’s anti-deficiency statute (A.R.S. § 33-729(A)) barred a deficiency judgment. The Court of Appeals vacated the $1.9 million deficiency judgment and remanded for further proceedings, ruling that the superior court had not correctly applied the statute’s standards to the sequence of loans. The court held that refinancing does not eliminate purchase-money protection to the extent new loan proceeds are used to pay off an earlier purchase-money obligation, and that loan funds used to construct a qualifying residence can also qualify for protection; however, amounts disbursed for non-purchase-money purposes may be traced and recovered through a deficiency action.
In this post-divorce case, Audrey Ann Lally and Noel Thomas Lally had been litigating child support, spousal maintenance, and other issues since their 2000 divorce; in 2007, the mother petitioned for contempt over alleged unpaid amounts, and after a hearing the family court entered an August 2007 judgment against the father for over $80,000 in arrearages. The father did not appeal that judgment but instead filed motions to amend it and to amend his own counter-petition, both of which the court denied in a September 5, 2007 order; he then appealed only from the denial order. The Arizona Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction, holding that the September order was not an appealable special order made after judgment under A.R.S. § 12-2101(A) because the father's arguments in his motions were identical to those already raised and rejected in the underlying August judgment and therefore did not present new issues.
In Cook v. Losnegard, an unmarried couple with one child litigated a petition by the father, who had moved to Washington, to modify custody and child support; the family court upheld the mother's sole custody but adjusted parenting time and ordered the parents to share the child's travel expenses for visits equally, while also recalculating incomes and reducing the father's monthly support obligation from $860 to $270. On appeal, the Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed the travel-expense allocation, finding no abuse of discretion because the father's relocation was reasonable and the allocation was equitable under the circumstances, and it upheld the income figures used for support calculations. However, the court vacated the modified support order and remanded, holding that the mother was denied due process because the family court had previously indicated it would not address child support at the custody trial and would instead refer the issue to a IV-D commissioner, leaving her without notice or an opportunity to present relevant evidence such as daycare costs.
The case arose from a dispute between Arizona Physicians IPA (APIPA) and Western Arizona Regional Medical Center (WARMC) over whether WARMC’s grievances alleging underpayment for hospital services to AHCCCS enrollees were timely filed under state law. AHCCCS ruled that most of the claims were timely received and ordered APIPA to decide them on the merits, labeling its order a “Final Decision” subject to judicial review. APIPA sought judicial review in superior court, which dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The Arizona Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that under the Administrative Procedures Act only final agency decisions terminating the administrative proceeding are reviewable, and AHCCCS’s interlocutory timeliness ruling did not end the case because the merits of the reimbursement disputes remained unresolved.