Justice HIMONAS , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 The State charged the defendant, James Cuttler, with vaginally raping and orally and anally sodomizing his then seven-year-old daughter. To bolster its case, the State sought to introduce evidence pursuant to rule 404(c) of the Utah Rules of Evidence that in 1984 and 1985 Cuttler vaginally raped and orally and anally sodomized his then eight- and ten-year-old daughters, demonstrating "a propensity to commit the crime[s] charged."...
Justice HIMONAS , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 This case is about a demand for indemnification under the High Voltage Overhead Lines Act (HVOLA). UTAH CODE 54-8c-1 to -6. HVOLA prohibits any activity within ten feet of a high voltage overhead line unless the public utility operating the line has been notified of the "intended activity" and, together with the party responsible for the triggering activity, has implemented "mutually satisfactory" safety precautions. Id. 54-...
Justice HIMONAS , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," Genesis 1:1, and families have been fighting over them ever since. Today we address a conflict between five siblings over land. The eldest, Donald Rawlings, claims full ownership of farmland deeded him by his father, while his three brothers and his sister (the siblings) argue their father never intended to vest sole ownership in Donald and to their permanent exclusion. The...
Justice DURHAM , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 Jenna Helf worked at an oil refinery operated by Chevron U.S.A. Inc. Her supervisor instructed her to add sulfuric acid to an open-air pit containing waste products from the refinery and she was injured by a poisonous gas produced by the resulting chemical reaction. Ms. Helf obtained workers' compensation benefits for her injuries. She then sued Chevron, alleging it was liable for an intentional tort because her supervisors knew that...
Justice Parrish , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 These interrelated cases arise from the marriage dissolution of Dr. Charles Dahl and Ms. Kim Dahl. On appeal of the divorce case, Ms. Dahl challenges the district court's substantive rulings on alimony, child custody, and distribution of the marital estate. She additionally challenges the district court's rulings on judicial bias, evidentiary issues, and attorney fees. Ms. Dahl also appeals the outcome of a separate, but related,...
On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals Chief Justice DURRANT , opinion of the Court: Introduction 1 This case concerns the scope of the Utah Workers' Compensation Act. Specifically, we are asked to address the causal connection that an employee must establish between an initial workplace injury and a subsequent non-workplace injury in order to recover workers' compensation for the subsequent injury. In January 2003, Steven Brown, suffered a back injury when he fell down the steps...
Associate Chief Justice LEE , opinion of the court as to Part I and Part II.A and concurring in the judgment of the court as to Part II.B.: 1 Mill Man Steel fired Kendall Utley on suspicion that he had misappropriated steel from the company. In so doing, Mill Man refused to pay Utley the commissions he claimed to have earned, asserting a right to withhold the commissions as an offset against the value of the allegedly misappropriated steel. Utley filed this suit, claiming that Mill Man...
Justice PARRISH , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 Angie Moffo lived rent free for eight years in a home that belonged to her brother-in-law, Doug Rich. After Mr. Rich filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the trustee, Stephen Rupp, sued Ms. Moffo for back rent under Utah's Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (the Act), sections 25-6-1 to -14 of the Utah Code. The district court, concluding that Ms. Moffo was the recipient of a fraudulent transfer, granted Mr. Rupp summary judgment and...
Justice PARRISH , opinion of the Court in part: INTRODUCTION 1 Sergio Meza appeals the district court's dismissal of his petition under the Post-Conviction Remedies Act (PCRA) seeking to withdraw his plea held in abeyance. In the alternative, Mr. Meza invites us to invoke our extraordinary writ authority to fashion a remedy allowing him to withdraw his plea. 2 We hold that the PCRA does not apply to a successfully completed plea in abeyance and therefore affirm the district court's...
Justice PARRISH , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 Robby and Lisa Robinson brought this medical malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Paul Taylor for the wrongful death of their deceased father, Brad Robinson. After the jury found that Dr. Taylor negligently caused Mr. Robinson's death, Dr. Taylor appealed, challenging the trial court's decision to admit into evidence Dr. Taylor's felony drug conviction. 1 We agree with Dr. Taylor and hold that evidence of Dr. Taylor's prior criminal...
Justice PARRISH , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 For millennia, physicians have sworn, "With regard to healing the sick, ... I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage." 1 And for perhaps just as long, the sick have sought redress when hurt or damage inevitably occur. 2 Caught in the middle, lawmakers have tried to strike a balance that provides redress for the injured while accounting for the concerns of the medical profession. 3 2 In 1986, the Utah Legislature...
Chief Justice DURRANT , opinion of the Court: Introduction 1 We are asked to review a magistrate's decision, at the preliminary hearing stage, to dismiss charges of rape and child sexual abuse. Under Utah's liberal bindover standard, a magistrate must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. This means that when reasonable inferences from the evidence cut both for and against the state's case, the magistrate lacks discretion to choose between them and must...
Chief Justice DURRANT , opinion of the Court: Introduction 1 This case requires us to consider the conditions under which the custodian of a dangerous person has a duty to prevent that person from injuring others. In prior cases, we have concluded that such a duty exists only if the custodian is aware, or should be aware, that the person poses a threat to a specific individual or a discrete group of individuals. In contrast, the Second Restatement of Torts does not require notice of the...
Justice HIMONAS , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 Martin Chris Nelson shot and killed Chad Grijalva and Derek Davis. He shot each man eight times — hitting them with all sixteen bullets in his gun — including an "immediately incapacitating" shot to the side of each man's head. After killing the two men, Mr. Nelson placed their bodies in a shallow grave, which he covered with trash, human excrement, and a dead cat. At trial, Mr. Nelson contended he had acted in self-defense. The...
Justice DURHAM , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 This is Mr. Winward's second appeal in a postconviction proceeding he initiated in 2009. On his first appeal, we affirmed the dismissal of most of his claims, concluding they were barred by the statute of limitations of the Post-Conviction Remedies Act (PCRA). Winward v. State, 2012 UT 85, 28, 293 P.3d 259 . But we vacated the dismissal on one narrow issue: whether the U.S. Supreme Court's new decisions in Lafler v. Cooper,...
Chief Justice DURRANT , opinion of the Court: Introduction 1 This case arises out of a dispute over compensation paid to an attorney, Gregory Jones, by the law firm Mackey Price Thompson & Ostler (Mackey Price) for work Mr. Jones performed on several class-action contingency fee cases involving the weight-loss pill Fen-Phen. Mr. Jones worked on the Fen-Phen cases from 2002 to May 26, 2005, when he abruptly developed a mental disability called dissociative amnesia, which prevented him...
Justice DURHAM , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 When the real estate bubble burst in 2008, the petitioners — a group of real estate investors — defaulted on a series of loans from respondent Yuanzong Fu. Fu sued. After more than a year of pretrial litigation, the district court entered default judgment against the petitioners because of their repeated failure to meet discovery deadlines. This judgment was affirmed by the court of appeals, which decided unanimously that the...
This opinion is subject to revision before publication in the Pacific Reporter PER CURIAM . 1 In the proceedings below, the defendant, D. Chris Robertson, was charged with multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. He claimed the prosecution violated Utah Code section 76-1-404 and his constitutional rights of freedom from double jeopardy. The district court denied Mr. Robertson's motion to dismiss. He was convicted on all counts and was sentenced to concurrent one-to-fifteen-year...
This opinion is subject to revision before publication in the Pacific Reporter JUSTICE NEHRING , opinion of the Court: INTRODUCTION 1 This matter comes before us by a petition for extraordinary writ filed by Utah Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox regarding the Republican primary election for Millard County Commissioner Seat A. The lieutenant governor challenges an August 14, 2014 district court order that set aside the election and ordered the Millard County Clerk to hold a new election...
Associate Chief Justice LEE , opinion of the Court: 1 Davis & Sanchez, PLLC is a law firm that represented Alvaro Diaz in a workers' compensation claim against his employer, Beehive Telephone. The firm filed Diaz's claim in the Utah Labor Commission in 2008. As a result of the firm's efforts, the parties were able to settle this claim. Under a settlement agreement entered into by Diaz, Beehive, and the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah (WCF), Diaz received a lump-sum disability payment,...
