Utah’s Business and Chancery Court: the First Six Months

• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 4 Pg. 15
• Year: 2025
• Pages: 15

Utah’s Business and Chancery Court: The First Six Months No. Vol. 38 No. 4 Pg. 15 Utah Bar Journal July, 2025

Views from the Bench

by The Hon. Rita M. Cornish

For those not familiar with the Utah Business and Chancery Court, it is a specialized trial court with limited jurisdiction created to resolve complex business and commercial litigation disputes. The court was created by HB0216, which was signed into law by Governor Spencer Cox on March 20, 2023. The Business and Chancery Court opened on October 1, 2024.

The jurisdiction of the court is both broad and limited. It is broad hi that the Business and Chancery Court has statewide jurisdiction without venue restrictions. Although the court will be permanently located on the first floor of the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, it "may perform any of [its] functions hi any location within the state." Utah Code Ann. § 78A-5a-204(1). This means the court has some flexibility to hold hearings and trials hi locations that are convenient to the parties and counsel if they are located outside Salt Lake City.

At the same time, the Business and Chancery Court's subject matter jurisdiction is limited hi two primary ways - amount hi controversy and case type. With respect to the former, the Business and Chancery Court's jurisdiction is limited to cases where a party seeks injunctive relief or damages equal to or hi excess of $300,000, with respect to at least one of their claims. See Utah Code Ann. § 78A-5a-103(1)(a).

With respect to case type, at least one of the parties' claims must be of a permitted kind. Borrowing a term for the federal courts, the Business and Chancery Court has "original" jurisdiction over claims arising from a breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, internal business governance disputes (accounting/dissociation/ dissolution), receiverships or liquidations, business torts, commercial insurance coverage disputes, the UCC, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, misappropriation of intellectual property, securities fraud, blockchain, antitrust, certain kinds of malpractice, and declaratory judgment. See id. § 78A-5a-103(1). Generally speaking, the court also has supplemental jurisdiction over any other claims hi an action if those claims arise from the same set of facts or circumstances as the claims within the court's original jurisdiction, see id. § 78A-5a-103(2), so long as those claims do not arise from a consumer contract, personal injury, the administrative procedures act, civil rights, the election code, domestic relations or child custody, protective orders, residential evictions, eminent domain, or the criminal code, see id. § 78A-5a-103(3).

As previously noted, the Utah Business and Chancery Court opened its doors on October 1, 2024, and April 1, 2025, marked six months of operations, hi that time, we have collected some information and learned some lessons that merit sharing.

We are often asked how many cases have been filed and what kinds of cases are being filed. The answer to the first of these questions is that twenty-seven cases have been directly filed...