The Utah Court of Appeals held that a court may resolve an ambiguous commercial lease on summary judgment when the admissible extrinsic evidence points only one way.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed key summary-judgment rulings in a commercial lease dispute while enforcing rule 26 damages-disclosure limits in part.
The Utah Court of Appeals held that negligent charging delay did not violate the Sixth Amendment where claimed parole and plea consequences were speculative.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed child-sex-abuse and witness-tampering convictions, finding no material Brady violation or prejudicial attorney error.
The Utah Court of Appeals held that retaining stolen property can continue until possession ends, making the prosecution of a stolen skid steer timely.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed an expert exclusion and attorney fees denial in a high-asset divorce arising from a California-law premarital agreement, holding that a technically deficient expert disclosure was harmless where the disclosing party promptly provided a full report and offered deposition access, and that a premarital agreement’s separate-property clause cannot waive a spouse’s right to attorney fees under Utah Code § 81-1-203(1).
The Utah Court of Appeals held for the first time that the economic loss rule bars fraud claims against corporate officers and agents who negotiated a contract on the company’s behalf, when those claims completely overlap with the corporation’s contractual duties — and reversed summary judgment on breach of contract and declaratory judgment claims because the district court had never determined what the contracts actually required.
The Utah Court of Appeals vacated a DUI conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to move to suppress a breath test after bodycam footage showed the defendant biting his fingernails continuously for over two minutes during the Baker pre-test observation period — a question of first impression establishing that fingernail contact constitutes introduction of a foreign object requiring the Baker clock to restart.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a post-decree minivan enforcement order because ordering payment of lost equity fell within the four corners of the divorce decree, but reversed a child support arrearage ruling because the district court refused to hold an evidentiary hearing mandated by Utah R. Civ. P. 108(d)(2) and applied abuse-of-discretion review instead of the independent assessment required by rule 108(f).
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a conviction for aggravated sexual abuse of a child, holding that Utah Rule of Evidence 404(c) requires no similarity between prior child molestation acts and the charged offense for propensity evidence to be admissible, and that trial counsel was not ineffective for retaining a juror whose troubling statements during voir dire were followed by an audible chuckle and an express affirmation of the presumption of innocence.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of a motion to suppress evidence seized in plain view during a traffic stop, holding that an officer’s probable cause determination was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances even though the detective’s body camera was not recording and subsequent field tests on the seized baggie returned negative or inconclusive results.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury under Model Utah Jury Instruction CV212 on “violation of a safety law,” holding that voluntary consensus standards from ANSI, ASTM, and the non-adopted portions of the International Building Code are not “safety laws” within the instruction’s meaning—which, under the noscitur a sociis canon and Restatement (Second) of Torts § 288B, is limited to formally codified statutes, ordinances, and administrative rules with the force of law.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed Aaron Verive’s four class B misdemeanor convictions for unlawful detention and domestic violence in the presence of a child, holding that momentarily blocking a preferred exit—whether a doorway or a vehicle—satisfies the unlawful detention statute regardless of duration or alternative routes, and that events immediately following the charged acts were intrinsic evidence outside Rule 404(b)’s other-acts exclusion.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed a partial summary judgment that had quieted most of a disputed downtown Moab parcel to a private landowner, holding that the 1886 Moab Townsite Plat vested title in the municipality before the 1890 federal Luster Patent issued, that Utah’s rebuttable presumption of official regularity supplies the missing historical documentation, and that adverse possession cannot run against government land designated for public use regardless of how long the private use has continued.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s order enforcing a post-divorce mortgage-payment obligation, holding that Provision 2 of the parties’ Modification supports at least three reasonable interpretations—property-specific, region-limited, and location-neutral—and is therefore ambiguous as a matter of law, requiring remand for an evidentiary hearing on the parties’ intent before the provision can be enforced against Stephen Schmidt.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed six sexual-abuse convictions, holding that uncharged grooming conduct is admissible as intrinsic evidence outside Rule 404(b), that a charging variance between the information and the acts proven at trial raises sufficiency and notice issues—not jurisdictional ones—and that failure to seek a trial continuance upon discovering the variance waives procedural-due-process claims.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a child enticement conviction, holding that the sufficiency-of-evidence inquiry is subjective—asking whether this defendant believed the persona was a minor—and that entrapment as a matter of law requires more than a realistic undercover persona; here, the defendant’s own texts and statements showed actual knowledge of the victim’s age and independent criminal initiative.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for LM General Insurance on an alternative basis—that an insured’s underinsured motorist claim was fairly debatable as a matter of law—because the insurer diligently investigated, made a timely offer that fairly reflected the inherent uncertainty of general damages, and acted promptly throughout, even though the arbitrator ultimately awarded significantly more.
The Utah Court of Appeals vacated a protective order against a sister whose angry text—expressing a conditional desire to fight—did not place the petitioner in reasonable fear of imminent physical harm under the Cohabitant Abuse Act, because the threatened violence was contingent on a future event, the parties were physically distant, and there was no history of violence between them.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed convictions for aggravated burglary and related charges, holding that trial counsel was not ineffective in declining to challenge for cause three jurors who raised their hands to leading voir dire questions and then affirmed their ability to follow jury instructions in response to the prosecutor’s follow-up.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a restitution order for an aggravated kidnapping victim’s mother, holding that a medical form attributing her PTSD to the crime, her own written statements, and a UOVC restitution specialist’s declaration—taken together—provided sufficient evidence of proximate causation for her lost wages.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed a grant of post-conviction relief, holding that the post-conviction court improperly applied the Chadwick presumption of prejudice to an ineffective-assistance claim; under Strickland, Miranda failed to show a reasonable probability that a proper unanimity instruction would have changed the verdict.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for a law firm on all legal malpractice claims, holding that issue preclusion arising from prior Tenth Circuit litigation conclusively barred GMW’s lost-profits theories and that GMW’s lost business value theory failed for lack of nonspeculative causation evidence.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed denial of a motion to arrest judgment on protective-order-violation convictions — holding that the State sufficiently proved the permanent order’s terms through testimony and a docket entry — but reversed all three convictions on ineffective-assistance grounds because defense counsel failed to seek redaction of a domestic-violence finding in the temporary protective order admitted as a trial exhibit, a finding the court had already ruled irrelevant and whose admission undermined confidence in the verdict.