This is a special action decision that is most interesting for the dispute between the judges on the panel. The court of appeals held that a trial court should not impose a “good cause” requirement on withdrawing admissions under Rule 36. Rule 36(b) states that a court may permit withdrawal if it would promote presentation of the merits and if the court is not persuaded that it would prejudice the requesting party in maintaining or defending the action on the merits. Easy enough, but the trial court here required a separate showing of good cause. The defendant was three days late in responding to requests for admission; the requests went to the heart of the dispute, and the requesting party suffered no prejudice.

So, why the squabble? The squabble is over whether the panel should have accepted special action jurisdiction. Judge Jacobs wrote for the majority, and Judge Catlett wrote a lengthy dissent tracing the history of special actions, common-law writs, and the separation of powers. While the judges address each other using language “with respect” and “with great respect,” the tone is more personal, like fisticuffs. For example, Judge Jacobs corrected Judge Catlett on several points of law and pointed out other cases in which Judge Catlett wrote for a panel and took the opposite position. So Judge Catlett, in his dissent, distinguished his own prior opinions while invoking the rule of law. We are left with an unpleasant feeling that these two judges don’t like each other, the same feeling we had twenty years ago when Justice Feldman and Justice Martone used opinions as battlefields. But, in fairness, we are seeing uglier disputes within other courts. E.g., Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, 169 F.4th 817 (9th Cir. 2025). In Olympus Spa, the Ninth Circuit majority admonished Judge VanDyke’s dissent as “vulgar barroom talk.” Judge Vandyke’s dissent begins: “This is a case about swinging dicks.” The dissent goes downhill from there.

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Under the common law, statutes of limitations do not apply to the State and public entities. This is known as the “nullum tempus occurrit regi” doctrine, i.e., time does not run against the king. Arizona has a statute that codifies most of this. A.R.S. § 12-510. Here, one public entity sued another, and the issue was whether A.R.S. § 12-821, the one-year limitations against public entities, applies when a public entity is the plaintiff. The statute states: “All actions against any public entity or public employee shall be brought within one year after the cause of action accrues and not afterward.”

The Arizona Supreme Court held that the statute does not expressly override the common law and, in context, appears in a section involving claims by private parties against public entities. Justice Beene, who authored the opinion, distinguished the Glenayre Electronics and played the textualists’ get-out-of-text-free cards well. Thus, the word “all” is not absolute. The court devoted a few paragraphs to countering Justice Bolick’s dissent. Justice Bolick’s textualism takes a more absolutist view. All means all. Sort of Shylockian, we might add.

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The opinion opens: “A deal is a deal, especially in Arizona—a right-to-contract state. With no significant overriding public policy considerations, Arizona holds parties to their deals.” We wonder whether any states view themselves differently. And if the issue of clawing back overpayments is so easily resolved, why does this opinion take so many pages? The trial court accepted the “voluntary payment doctrine,” and the court of appeals decided we needed a contract class, or perhaps an equitable remedies class. The court of appeals distinguished a Division Two case, Wood v. Northwest Hosp. LLC, in which the doctrine was applied to overpayments made to an employee/physician. Whatever equity door the Wood case may have opened, it seems mostly closed.

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