Utah Law Developments

• Jurisdiction: Utah,United States
• Citation: Vol. 33 No. 6 Pg. 34
• Pages: 34
• Publication year: 2020

Utah Law Developments Vol. 33 No. 6 Pg. 34 Utah Bar Journal December, 2020

November, 2020

Appellate Highlights

Rodney R. Parker, Dani Cepernich, Robert Cummings, Nathanael Mitchell, Adam Pace, and Andrew Roth

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

Wittingham v. TNE Limited Partnership 2020 UT 49 469 P.3d 1035 (July 15, 2020) The supreme court held that a trust deed executed by an administratively dissolved limited partnership was merely voidable – as opposed to void. Applying the test first articulated in Ockey v. Lehmer, 2008 UT 37, 189 P.3d 51, the supreme court assessed whether the legislature had declared that the contract at issue was unlawful and absolutely void, and whether the transaction harmed the public as a whole.

Matter of Adoption of K.T.B., 2020 UT 51 (July 21, 2020)

The district court struck a filing by a mother seeking to intervene in an adoption proceeding due to a procedural deficiency in the filing, and then excluded her from participating in the adoption proceedings because she had failed to intervene within 30 days as required under the Utah Adoption Act. On appeal, the court reversed the district court’s ruling and held that the “strict compliance” requirement in the Utah Adoption Act is unconstitutional as applied to the mother, where the mother’s deficient filing “fulfilled the purpose” of the act, but did not strictly comply with it.

In re Adoption of B.B. 2020 UT 52 469 P.3d 1083 (July 23, 2020)

In this challenge to an adoption proceeding, the Utah Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s denial of the child’s biological father’s motion to revoke his relinquishment of the child. The court rejected the father’s argument that Utah Code § 78B-6-112(a)(5) requires a separate hearing or procedure to establish that consent was “truly voluntary;” and that the failure to notify him of his right to seek counseling invalidates his relinquishment on due process grounds.

In re Adoption of B.B., 2020 UT 52 (July 28, 2020)

This adoption case involved a child whose unmarried biological parents are members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the question whether the Indian Child Welfare Act required the court to transfer the case to tribal court. Reviewing the evidence in the record, the court held the birth mother was domiciled in Utah (where she lived at the time the action was filed) because the evidence indicated that when she moved to Utah – the relevant point in time for the domicile inquiry – she intended to remain permanently. The court also held that the birth...