This concerns a narrow issue of contractors’ insurance coverage. For those interested in such things, though, it makes a couple of useful points so we will cover those briefly.

Contractor had to replace a roof that one of its subs had built badly. It then made a claim, as an Additional Insured on the sub’s policy, for the cost of the replacement. Insurer denied the claim; Contractor sued; the trial court granted it summary judgment; Insurer appealed.

The Court of Appeals reverses and remands with instructions to enter judgment for Insurer. The useful points are: (1) an Additional Insured is essentially in the position of the Named Insured, and (2) a contractor isn’t covered for the cost of its mistakes. Put that way the result makes sense but you can’t get there without weaving through several policy definitions. The court does so rather briskly and and then summarizes them a couple times for clarity.

(Opinion: Double AA Builders v.  Preferred Contractors’ Insurance)

This is a domestic case but deals with the time limit on judgments.

The parties divorced in 2005. At that time the court entered an order disposing of their properties in England, including one known as the “Hadley Highstone property.” (Irrelevant point of possible interest: Hadley Highstone is an area of Barnet, which is nowadays a North London borough, that’s named after a local signpost.) The order wasn’t carried out and the court entered a subsequent order in 2008. That wasn’t carried out, either, and so in 2015 Husband filed another petition concerning it. The trial court dismissed it, ruling that since the decree and related orders hadn’t been renewed they had lapsed after five years, 12-1551, and so it lacked jurisdiction to enforce them. Husband appealed.

If you’re wondering at this point whether you needed to renew your divorce decree, you don’t. 12-1551 “applies to judgments or decrees for payments of specific amounts of money or judgment liens,” not divorce decrees. The statute “applies to judgments upon which execution or like process may be sought” whereas “enforcement of dissolution decrees, typically through the contempt power, is generally predicated upon the equitable power of the family court.” What happens in cases other than the typical or general the court doesn’t say.

The court also says that even if the statute did apply the five years hadn’t begun to run. The statute does not begin to run until the occurrence of an event that could give rise to an action on the judgment. The trial court had ordered Wife to do certain things but hadn’t set a time limit; Wife had never done them. Husband argued that because there was no time limit he couldn’t sue her for for not doing them.

If that logic sounds a little soggy, it may perhaps be that the second argument is really just a sub-species of the first. In any event, the problem is that this is yet another case in which the court issues precedent on an issue of law based on incomplete briefing. Wife didn’t file a brief. And apparently neither party argued these issues below; the trial court seems to have raised them sua sponte in its order of dismissal. But the court continues to feel that merely because the issues haven’t been joined is no reason they shouldn’t be published.

(Opinion: Jensen v. Bierne)

Affirming summary judgment in a malpractice case for not having proper expert evidence. This is the published version of a memorandum that came down earlier this month. The court granted a request for publication; not sure why this is publishable except perhaps for the part about midwife regulations.

Plaintiffs Wife was allegedly injured during the birth of her child. Plaintiffs sued their OB and the nurse-midwife who assisted him. Based on the discovery testimony of Plaintiffs’ expert the trial court granted Defendants summary judgment. Plaintiffs appeal.

As to the doctor, the expert said at deposition that he didn’t fall below the standard then “corrected” the depo to say that he did by not having the nurse “working under . . .  a set of protocols to appropriately monitor patients.” (The Superior Court refused to strike that and apparently that ruling was not appealed.) The court says that the correction “does not specify how [Defendant] allegedly breached the standard of care.” Plaintiffs argued that the expert had said enough at depo to establish an inadequate-supervision claim. The court says that they didn’t allege this separately, that it was part of the malpractice claim, that thus there had to be expert evidence of a breach of standard, and that even the correction letter “did not state what standard of care applied to [Defendant].” As to whether and under what circumstances there can be a negligent-supervision claim against a doctor for supervising a nurse that isn’t subject to the med-mal statutes, the court doesn’t say.

As to the nurse, Plaintiffs argued that she was negligent per se for violating some unspecified Arizona midwife regulations. But the nurse was a registered RN subject to the nursing statutes, not licensed under or subject to the midwife statutes. Plaintiffs argue that the midwife statutes apply to “a person who delivers a baby or provides health care related to . . . labor” and should therefore cover the nurse. The court says that this “would lead to absurd results” such as making midwife regs binding on the OB. Plaintiff’s OB expert criticized the nurse but his opinion was not sufficient under the statute since he was not a nurse.

Much of the opinion is spent describing the factual reasons why the trial court did not abuse its discretion by refusing to give Plaintiffs extra time to find a nurse/midwife expert. Basically, Plaintiffs argued that the statute wasn’t clear on whether they needed a nurse expert and the court points out that the cases clarifying that had come down months before the Plaintiffs’ deadline.

(Opinion: St. George v. Plimpton)