This was an attempt to use equity to enforce an unwritten agreement to split a contingent fee.

Plaintiff, a lawyer, was asked by another lawyer to work on a personal-injury case. They agreed to split the fee but put nothing in writing. Eventually the clients fired Plaintiff. They later fired the other attorney and hired Defendant, who settled their claim. Plaintiff demanded part of the fee; Defendant refused. Plaintiff sued in quantum meruit. (The opinion includes a footnote defining quantum meruit. We wonder what other obscure legal terms the court will from now on think it necessary to define — “statute” perhaps.) The trial court dismissed the Complaint.

The Court of Appeals affirms. The ERs require both contingent fees and fee splits to be in writing. The court explains why this is a good thing. Equity won’t enforce a contract that is against public policy. Plaintiff had a California case but “[n]either the interpretation and application of the Arizona Rules of Professional Conduct, nor this state’s public policy is subject to meaningful analysis by applying the law of other jurisdictions.” (This is of course throw-away rhetoric that our courts will ignore when foreign precedent supports their policy views.) Plaintiff also argued that prior Arizona cases had involved violation of statutes, not just ethical rules. But public policy has “the same force and effect” as a statute.

Plaintiff and the lawyer who brought him into the case were buddies who would have split the fee without a writing. Instead of being embarrassed by that Plaintiff insists on it. The moral is that friends don’t let friends act unethically.

(Opinion: Levine v. Haralson, Miller, Pitt et al.)

Defendants tried to use a foreign worker’s compensation claim to block an Arizona personal-injury case. The opinion is interesting mostly because the analysis stops just about the time it should start.

Plaintiff’s employer, a Nebraska company, sent him to truck-driving school in Arizona. He was injured in an accident caused by an instructor. He obtained worker’s compensation in Nebraska and then sued the school and instructor here. Defendants argued that because he was entitled to Arizona worker’s comp benefits our statute (23-1023.B) applies: over one year had passed and Plaintiff had no re-assignment so Defendants sought summary judgment. The trial court granted it.

The Court of Appeals reverses.  Plaintiff cited cases to the effect that the statute doesn’t apply when workers comp benefits aren’t involved, even if the plaintiff could have sought them. The court agrees with Defendant that these don’t apply since Plaintiff did obtain comp benefits and his employer, under Nebraska law, has a subrogation interest in his lawsuit (and he included it as a party in his lawsuit, as required by Nebraska law to get it reimbursed). But the court decides that the statute doesn’t apply anyway, because it has not been “interpreted . . . as a statute of limitations” and is “not designed” to trap plaintiffs or shield tortfeasors.

That is the limit of the court’s statutory interpretation. It does at least quote the statute, though it never really explains why the language of that statute, or any other, means that it doesn’t apply. Maybe its conclusion is correct. But its analysis consists of a wave of the hand and a nod to good intentions.

And what of the employer’s subrogation interest? That is saved, too, since the law of the state where compensation is paid governs subrogation rights.

(Opinion: Jackson v. Eagle FMC LLC)

The court both decides and avoids deciding whether you can sue someone for letting you commit a crime.

Plaintiff was a disabled child-abuser placed in a group home. The home took him to a church function but failed to supervise him, whereupon he molested another child. Having pled guilty to it and been sentenced for it, he sued the group home in negligence and under the Adult Protective Services Act for letting him do it. Defendant moved for judgment on the pleadings; the trial court granted it.

On the negligence count the Court of Appeals affirms. Defendant argued the “wrongful conduct rule,” accepted elsewhere, by which you can’t sue in tort for injury resulting from your own crime (i.e., your sentence). The court suggests that that doctrine is “slippery” and declines, it says, to rule on whether it applies. Instead it gets to the same place by a different route: it decides that the injury resulting from your own crime is not a cognizable item of damage. “Injury” is the  “invasion of [a] legally protected interest,” per Restatement 7. “No properly-convicted criminal has a legally protected interest in being free from the inherent consequences of the resulting sentence.” Apparently the court does things this way to avoid the charge of abrogating a cause of action; “we are aware of no authority suggesting that “injuries” under the anti-abrogation clause should be interpreted differently than “injuries” recognized under tort law.”

But as to the vulnerable-adult claim the court vacates. The claim was only “briefly” addressed in the motion papers, which did not give it “meaningful” analysis, and the trial court’s ruling didn’t mention it. “Whether [Plaintiff] has stated a viable claim under [the statute] must be considered by the superior court in the first instance.” So the court remands.

This can’t be the proper analysis. Is it to be the law that a ruling is vulnerable because the court decides that the arguments below were insufficiently lengthy or “meaningful”? If so, by what standard are those things to be judged? The court’s real concern seems to be that the trial court issued a “detailed” ruling that didn’t separately discuss the statutory claim. But it issued a judgment and is assumed to have addressed the issues necessary to do so. If (as the Court of Appeals suggests) the negligence analysis doesn’t apply to the statutory claim then the situation is that the trial court didn’t apply the right standard, not that it skipped the issue.

The court says that “the parties have not provided any helpful briefing on this issue.” Maybe that’s the answer. We should give the court some credit: maybe the parties really didn’t give it anything to work with and it would rather rule based on the parties’ arguments than on its own theories. That’s a valid concern to have, as we’ve said several times. But in that event the answer is to request supplemental briefs, not to bend the standards of appellate review.

(Opinion: Muscat v. Creative Innervisions)