Background
After petitioner ended a brief dating relationship with respondent and blocked him, respondent encountered her as she left work around 2:30 a.m. on June 28, 2025. He followed her onto the freeway, demanded that she unblock him, threatened to “make” her pull over, and swerved into her lane, causing her to swerve.
The next night, a car followed petitioner to her remote home and chased her vehicle into the driveway. Petitioner testified that she saw respondent once they reached the driveway. He left after petitioner ran inside and her mother came outside carrying a bat. Respondent later sent petitioner a Facebook message mocking her job and saying that she had made an enemy for life. The trial court credited petitioner and her mother, found two unwanted contacts that created objectively reasonable alarm and apprehension for petitioner’s safety, and entered a permanent stalking protective order.
Respondent appealed, challenging the denial of his directed-verdict motion, the sufficiency of the evidence and resulting order, and the court’s failure to allow closing argument before announcing its decision.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Treating respondent’s directed-verdict motion in the bench proceeding as a motion for involuntary dismissal, the court held that the evidence was legally sufficient to reach the factfinder. In context, petitioner’s use of “he” and “him” plainly referred to respondent, and her testimony permitted a reasonable finding that he was the driver during both incidents. Respondent also had not preserved his specific identity-based sufficiency argument in the trial court.
The trial court’s ultimate factual findings were supported by evidence, including its finding that respondent was the other driver on June 28 and 29. Respondent challenged no other factual finding and identified no error in the trial court’s application of Oregon’s stalking-protective-order statute to the facts found.
The court also rejected respondent’s unpreserved closing-argument claim. Respondent could have asked to make a closing argument when the trial court began announcing its ruling, so preservation was not excused. Any error was not plain because it was reasonably debatable whether a show-cause hearing on a permanent stalking protective order constitutes a “trial by the court” governed by ORCP 58 A and B(6). The court further explained that ORCP 58 B(7)’s two-hour minimum applies only to jury trials.
Key Takeaways
- A petitioner’s testimony, considered in context with the petition and the court’s questions, may sufficiently identify the respondent even when the witness uses pronouns rather than repeatedly stating the respondent’s name.
- A party asserting evidentiary insufficiency must preserve the specific theory of insufficiency presented on appeal.
- A party who wants closing argument should timely request it; beginning to announce a ruling does not necessarily deprive counsel of an opportunity to object.
- It is not obvious under existing law that an SPO show-cause hearing is a “trial by the court” subject to ORCP 58’s closing-argument procedure.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the distinction between reviewing whether evidence was legally sufficient to reach the factfinder and reviewing whether the trial court’s ultimate findings were supported by evidence. It also confirms that reasonable contextual inferences—not merely a witness’s use of a party’s full name—can establish identity in an SPO proceeding.
For practitioners, the opinion underscores the need to state each specific sufficiency argument in the trial court and to request closing argument as soon as it appears the court may rule without hearing it. An unpreserved procedural objection will not qualify as plain error when the governing rule’s application is reasonably disputed.