Santee v. Mesa Airlines (CA2 2/28/12)

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We don’t know where to begin. Well, first, let’s just tell you what happened:

Santee sued Mesa for damaging his personal property. Mesa moved to dismiss (“after several years of pretrial litigation,” the court tells us) and won; the court filed a signed minute entry. Mesa, which had made an offer of judgment, then moved for expert fees and costs under Rule 68(g). Santee filed his notice of appeal within thirty days of the dismissal but before this  motion had been ruled on. The trial court then granted that motion and “entered a final judgment dismissing the claims.”

The Court of Appeals decides, sua sponte, that it has no jurisdiction because the notice of appeal was premature (filed before the judgment entered after the Rule 68 motion). A premature notice works only if the entry of judgment is merely ministerial, i.e. if nothing could change between the notice and the actual entry of judgment (Barassi 1981). This is to prevent disruption of the trial process and avoid piecemeal litigation.

To its credit, the court had ordered supplemental briefs. Santee argued that a signed minute entry is appealable and a subsequent motion shouldn’t make it not so. The court says the argument is “unsupported by any authority,” ignores the trial-disruption issue, and, anyway, is just what time-extending motions do.

So Santee pointed out that a Rule 68 motion is not time-extending (ARCAP 9). The court agrees but says that there was no final judgment. Why not? Apparently because “the filing of the Rule 68(g) motion created an issue that demanded resolution by the trial court.”

We try to keep these things reasonably short, so we’re not going to try to untangle the court’s “reasoning” in those last two paragraphs.

Santee also contended that the taxing of costs was ministerial. The court disagreed, with perhaps a bit more justification, though Santee had an argument.

Okay, that’s what happened. Now, so that you don’t go away confused, be sure not to learn anything from this case. Here’s the law:

A signed minute entry is appealable. Why? Because its a judgment under Rule 58; the Focal Point case told us that a long time ago. Taxing fees and costs is not a separate issue that prevents entry of an appealable judgment; there are cases on that, too.

Once judgment is entered the trial court has no jurisdiction except over time-extending motions and those in furtherance of the appeal. If you forget to have the court award fees and costs before judgment, you need to move for new trial or to amend. Again, the cases are out there.

Therefore, the appeal time began to run with the signed minute entry. The trial court had no jurisdiction to entertain the Rule 68 motion or to amend (there having been no such motion) its earlier judgment. The second judgment was a nullity; Santee’s notice of appeal was timely, not premature.

Yes, Santee could have objected to the Rule 68 motion on jurisdictional grounds and filed another notice of appeal after the second judgment. That would have been the safest course, especially in these days when courts bend over backward to coddle people who don’t know the law.

On the subject of disrupting the process, can you imagine what would happen if this case were the law? The motions you could file to disrupt and delay your opponent’s appeal would be limited only by your imagination.

One last confusion: This slip opinion has the red Do-Not-Cite stamp the court uses for memorandum decisions. But it says “OPINION,” not “MEMORANDUM DECISION,” and the court has released it through the published-opinion channel. So is it an opinion, or a memo, or does the court think is has invented the non-citable opinion?

We would normally delay blogging one like this, per our FAQ, but presumably this isn’t going anywhere except back to Superior Court for the entry of a new notice of appeal.

(link to opinion)

Nunez v. Professional Transit Management (2/23/12)

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This case clarifies the standard of care for common carriers.

Defendant runs the Tucson city buses. Nunez’ decedent (who died before trial of unrelated causes) was a wheelchair-bound bus passenger. The driver strapped her wheelchair down but didn’t seat belt her. When the bus had to stop suddenly, she was thrown forward and injured.

Plaintiff argued that Brown should have been belted. The trial instructed the jury on the classic common-carrier standard: “the highest degree of care practicable under the circumstances.” Professional had asked for a reasonable-care instruction in addition to that, based on Atchison (1939), which decided that that instruction properly limits a common carrier’s duty. From a plaintiff’s verdict, the defendant appealed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Supreme Court reverses. Atchison is “hardly a model of analytical consistency” but it and later cases demonstrate that Arizona has always been uneasy with the common-carrier standard. Although common carriers have been held to have numerous duties, the standard of care in satisfying them is a separate issue. On that score the Restatements (second and third) require only reasonable care. Passengers entrust their safety to common carriers but they do the same with doctors, for example; there is no basis for imposing a higher standard.

Lowrey came to this conclusion ten years ago, based on a New York decision this opinion also cites, but that was a Division One case that Division Two (which handled this appeal) didn’t think it could follow in the face of other precedent. The Supreme Court agrees that the precedent was not clear.

“We therefore conclude that the appropriate standard of care in negligence actions by passengers against common carriers is the objective, reasonable person standard in traditional negligence law.”

Plaintiff argued that changing the standard would abrogate her cause of action. But clarifying the standard does not abrogate, it merely regulates. And ““Just as the common law is court-made law based upon the circumstances and conditions of the time, so can the common law be changed by the court when conditions and circumstances change.” So, does anti-abrogation apply to courts or not? The court chooses not to nail this down.

Plaintiff also argued that the court’s decision should be prospective only. But the precedent was not “clear and reliable,” especially in view of Lowrey, so that’s not appropriate.

This opinion tells you clearly, repeatedly, and exactly what it means, and why, in a relative minimum of pages. Hurwitz? You guessed it.

(link to opinion)

Baker v. University Physicians (CA2 2/22/12)

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THIS OPINION HAS BEEN VACATED

Even we have sympathy for trial judges once in a while. This opinion decides that he made the right decision, then reverses him.

Baker’s daughter died in defendants’ care; he sued for malpractice. But his expert was a hematologist/oncologist and the defendant doctor was a pediatrician, sub-specializing in pediatric hematology/oncology. The trial court ruled that the expert did not qualify under 12-12604 and therefore granted summary judgment for defendants.

The statute requires that the expert “be a specialist who is board certified in [the defendant’s] specialty . . .” The Court of Appeals says that “specialty” is ambiguous and decides that it means a member of a specialty board. It then reads from the web sites of a couple of specialty boards to help decide the case.

To its credit, the court is apparently at least a bit uneasy about this and so throws in a footnote to the web site stuff saying that it can take judicial notice of facts not subject to reasonable dispute even if the trial court didn’t. So, it’s now official: the court can read a web site and decide the case based on that rather than the record or the briefs. And how does it know that what’s there is not subject to reasonable dispute or that it hasn’t missed some site or page with contradictory or qualifying information, especially when the court is doing it’s own factual research not checked by the adversarial, discovery/disclosure process that we used to be told was the cornerstone of our legal system? Just trust the courts, folks; after all, if they weren’t infallible then some joker might have started his own web page pointing out their mistakes.

The court notes that Awsienko used a dictionary rather than medical board web sites to define “specialist.” But that was dictum and, anyway, CA1 tells us that its definition is more refined than Awsienko’s. Web sites are apparently more reliable than dictionaries.

The parties argued that an expert has to be in the same subspecialty as the defendant. The court says that since the statute says “specialty,” that’s what it means, not subspecialty.’ (This means that Baker actually wins this round; see below.)

Baker made the usual sorts of arguments – there was some overlap between the physicians’ training, the expert had studied some pediatrics and would be willing to see pediatric patients, the 17-year-old patient wasn’t really pediatric, etc. But that’s not enough since the statute requires the same specialty.

Baker also argued that the statute abrogates the right to recover damages. We thought we’d been through that one before and it turns out we were right: Governale (2011). Baker’s new argument was that the statute prohibited him from bringing an action because there are only 1800 pediatric hematologists and none of the twenty he contacted would help him. This doesn’t fly because under the court’s analysis he doesn’t need a pediatric hematologist, just a pediatrician. Baker unsuccessfully also tried to make the old, Governale arguments.

Having concluded that the trial court’s grant of summary judgment was correct the court affirms it, right? Wrong; it vacates and “remands for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”  The opinion does not claim to have changed the law; on the contrary, it insists that it just reads the words the Legislature has used. But because the statute, in the court’s view, allows the use of any pediatrician and Baker didn’t try that, he gets to try again.

Give Baker’s lawyer credit: it apparently didn’t occur to her that the actions of a pediatric hematologist/oncologist could be judged by a pediatrician whose career has been spent treating earaches and giving inoculations. Maybe that’s why the court cuts Baker a break not warranted by any principle of procedure – though she was wrong on the law and wrong on the facts, she tried to be truer to the statute than the court thinks she had to be. Her reward is to have the best of both worlds; she can use any pediatrician on standard of care and will call her hematologist to make up for the pediatrician’s ignorance.

Judge Eckerstrom concurs but adds that he would have the trial judge decide “whether defendant’s specialization in pediatrics was pertinent to the standard of care or practice in treating the patient‟s blood condition.” It would, you see, be “absurd” (a word he uses three times) to judge a pediatrician by the standards of a pediatrician if the patient didn’t really need a pediatrician. The trial court should, it appears, determine (as a matter of fact? as a matter of law? as a matter of judicial notice? maybe he can just read some web sites) what specialty was really the most appropriate (here, a pediatrician or hematologist) and require an expert from it. The majority refers to this “test” as “logical and attractive” even though it rejects (as noted above) the same factual argument because the statute says “same specialty,” quotes legislative history to the effect that the defendant and expert must have the same training, and notes evidence that hematologists and pediatricians have different training and approaches.

(link to opinion)