Utah Law Developments
| Publication year | 2019 |
| Pages | 32 |
July, 2019
Appellate Highlights
By Rodney R. Parker, Dani Cepernich, Robert Cummings, Nathanael Mitchell, and Adam Pace
Editor’s Note: The following appellate cases of interest were recently decided by the Utah Supreme Court, Utah Court of Appeals, and United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. The following summaries have been prepared by the authoring attorneys listed above, who are solely responsible for their content.
UTAH SUPREME COURT
State v. Hon. Ann Boyden, 2019 UT 11 (March 20, 2019)
The State convicted Bela Fritz of criminal drug charges and he was sentenced to prison using Bela Fritz’s criminal history. Then, during the prison intake process, a corrections officer discovered that the man was not Bela Fritz after all. The State moved to vacate the conviction and sentence under Rule 60(b) and the man opposed the motion. The district court denied the motion, holding that the State’s only avenue for relief was the PCRA. On a Rule 65B petition for extraordinary relief, the Supreme Court held that in this “somewhat unconventional” case, the district court had jurisdiction to entertain the Rule 60(b) motion “because neither the PCRA nor any other statute or rule governs this aspect of criminal proceedings.”
Sumsion v. J. Lyne Roberts & Sons, Inc. 2019 UT 14 (April 26, 2019)
The Supreme Court held that a contractor that created an artificial condition on land of another may owe a duty of reasonable care to the employees of the land owner. The Supreme Court held that Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 385, 394-398, and 403-404 provided the proper framework for the analysis.
UTAH COURT OF APPEALS
In re CCW, 2019 UT App 34 (March 7, 2019)
Mother petitioned to terminate parental rights of father, who had abandoned the children and twice been incarcerated for violently attacking the mother along with another woman. For purposes of the best interest analysis, the Court of Appeals held that simply because there is no history of domestic violence toward children, district courts cannot compartmentalize and ignore domestic violence against others, including the mother in the instant case, and must carefully weigh the potential impact of that violence on the children even if not visited upon the children.
McCloud v. State, 2019 UT App 35 (March 14, 2019)
The Court of Appeals recognized a new exception to the procedural rule barring PCRA claims that could have been raised on direct appeal. The court held that claims that could have been raised in a Rule 23B motion will not be barred post-conviction when, as here, the record on appeal did not indicate a reasonable probability that developing those claims would have resulted in reversal.
California College v. UCN, 2019 UT App 39 (March 21, 2019)
In a dispute between a telephone system provider and for-profit colleges, the Court of Appeals granted interlocutory review to decide whether the trial court properly denied a motion to exclude the plaintiffs’ two experts. The district court reasoned that issues of conflicting data went to the weight of the evidence. Because both sides agreed that the underlying data was flawed, the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the district court had abused its discretion by admitting the experts’ testimony where their opinions were...
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