Summary 2009 WY 96

Summary of Decision issued August 11, 2009

Summaries are prepared by Law Librarians and are not official statements of the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Case Name: Lamar Advertising v. Larry Nicholls, LLC

Citation: 2009 WY 96

Docket Number: S-08-0188

Appeal from the District Court of Sweetwater County, the Honorable Jere A. Ryckman, Judge.

Representing Appellant Lamar: Timothy M. Stubson and Orintha E. Karns of Brown, Drew & Massey, LLP, Casper, Wyoming.

Representing Appellee Nicholls, LLC: Frank R. Chapman of Chapman Valdez, Casper, Wyoming.

Facts/Discussion: Lamar appealed from the district court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of Nicholls, LLC. The district court ruled that a lease allowing Lamar to maintain a billboard on the Nicholls, LLC property was void as an unreasonable restraint on alienation.
The district court applied the three factors from the reasonableness test from Hartnett v. Jones. The three factors included: the purpose for which the restraint was imposed; the duration of the restraint and the method of determining the price. Lamar’s lease was a servitude that had the potential effect of restraining alienation by limiting the value of use of the property. It amounted to an indirect restraint on alienation. The rational justification test set out in § 3.5 of the Restatements (Third) Property: Servitudes should have been applied to determine whether the lease was invalid. The lease could have been canceled without penalty if the lessor gave notice thirty days prior to the end of the lease term that it did not wish to renew the lease. Lamar’s testimony provided valid business reasons for the lease terms. The explanation established a rational justification for the servitude. In addition, the lease included a provision that allowed Nicholls, LLC to terminate the leasehold if it obtained a permit to construct a building on the site. The district court’s conclusion that the lease unreasonably diminished the value of the property because Nicholls, LLC was not free to improve it by building a structure was apparently based solely upon Nicholls, LLC representation that a Rock Springs city ordinance prohibited it from obtaining a building permit while the sign was located on the property. However, the record did not contain the ordinance or any testimony that an application for a building permit had been denied.

Conclusion: The Court applied the correct legal standard and concluded the servitude did not pose an improper restrain on alienation and the lease was valid.

Reversed.

J. Kite delivered the decision.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/nzly7n .

[SPECIAL NOTE: This opinion uses the "Universal Citation." It was given an "official" citation when it was issued. You should use this citation whenever you cite the opinion, with a P.3d parallel citation. Please note when you look at the opinion that all of the paragraphs are numbered. When you pinpoint cite to a quote, you should cite to this paragraph number rather than to any page number. If you need assistance in putting together a citation using the Universal Citation form, please contact the Wyoming State Law Library.]

Summary 2008 WY 127

Summary of Decision issued October 15, 2008

Summaries are prepared by Law Librarians and are not official statements of the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Case Name: Ringolsby, Jr. v. Johnson

Citation: 2008 WY 127

Docket Number: S-08-0022

Appeal from the District Court of Laramie County, the Honorable Keith G. Kautz, Judge.

Representing Appellants: John B. “Jack” Speight and Robert T. McCue of Speight, McCue & Associates, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Representing Appellees: James R. Salisbury and Don W. Riske of Riske, Salisbury & Kelly, PC, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Facts/Discussion: Appellants Ringolsby and Swanhorst appeal from the district court’s order denying their claim for attorneys’ fees. One issue was presented for review: whether the trial court abused its discretion by ruling that Appellants did not meet their burden of proving the reasonableness of their attorneys' fees where Appellant submitted redacted billing statements along with an offer of in camera review to the trial court.
Wyoming has adopted the federal lodestar test for the determination of reasonableness of attorneys’ fees which requires that two factors be considered: whether the fee charged represents the product of reasonable hours times a reasonable rate and whether other factors of discretionary application should be considered to adjust the fee either upward or downward. Appellants made no showing of the nature of the services performed in the instant case. In looking at the redacted billing statements, the district court had no way of ascertaining the nature of the services performed, and thus the reasonableness of such services. The affidavit provided did not contain enough explanation to serve as a sufficient basis to determine the reasonableness of the fees.
The trial court held that the suggestion for the Court to review the statements provided by Appellants and then request review in camera if necessary amounted to a request that the Court first determine whether Plaintiffs met their burden of proof and then give them a second chance to meet the burden of proof. The Wyoming Supreme Court has specifically rejected such attempts to prove reasonable attorney fees after once failing to do so.

Holding: The district court did not abuse its discretion by ruling that Appellants did not meet their burden of proof in establishing the reasonableness of their attorneys’ fees based on the fact that they did not prove the fees in conformity with the requirements of precedent.

Affirmed.

District Judge Cranfill delivered the decision.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/4krjmp

[SPECIAL NOTE: This opinion uses the "Universal Citation." It was given an "official" citation when it was issued. You should use this citation whenever you cite the opinion, with a P.3d parallel citation. Please note when you look at the opinion that all of the paragraphs are numbered. When you pinpoint cite to a quote, you should cite to this paragraph number rather than to any page number. If you need assistance in putting together a citation using the Universal Citation form, please contact the Wyoming State Law Library.]

Summary 2007 WY 182

Summary of Decision issued November 15, 2007

[SPECIAL NOTE: This opinion uses "Universal Citation" and was given an "official" citation when issued. You should use this citation whenever you cite the opinion, with a P.3d parallel citation. You will note that all of the paragraphs are numbered. When you need to provide a pinpoint citation, the universal portion of the citation will use that paragraph number. The pinpoint citation in the P.3d portion should include the reporter page number. If you need assistance, please contact the Wyoming State Law Library.]

Summaries are prepared by Law Librarians and are not official statements of the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Case Name: Pierce v. State

Citation: 2007 WY 182

Docket Number: 05-145

Appeal from the District Court of Natrona County, the Honorable W. Thomas Sullins, Judge

Representing Appellant (Defendant): Kenneth M. Koski, State Public Defender; Donna D. Domonkos, Appellate Counsel; Marion Yoder, Senior Assistant Appellate Counsel; and Ryan R. Roden, Senior Assistant Appellate Counsel. Argument by Ms. Yoder.

Representing Appellee (Plaintiff): Patrick J. Crank, Attorney General; Paul S. Rehurek, Deputy Attorney General; D. Michael Pauling, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Eric A. Johnson, Director Jonathan Haidsiak, Student Director and Orintha Karns, Student Intern, of the Prosecution Assistance Program. Argument by Ms. Karns.

Issues: Whether the search at issue in the instant case violated Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution. Whether the search at issue in the instant case violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Facts/Discussion: A Casper police officer arrested Appellant for two traffic violations and proceeded to search the vehicle Appellant had been occupying prior to the arrest. Appellant later filed a motion in the district court to suppress the drug-related evidence that the officer seized from the vehicle.
Standard of Review: Findings on factual issues made by the district court considering a motion to suppress are not disturbed on appeal unless they are clearly erroneous. The Court noted they were concerned in the appeal with the applicability of the search-incident-to-arrest exception.
Wyoming Constitution: The Court stated they have eschewed bright-line rules in considering non-consensual vehicle searches conducted incident to arrest, and instead favor an approach that requires a search be reasonable under all of the circumstances as determined by the judiciary in light of the historical intent of the state’s search and seizure provision. It was the State’s burden to prove that the search-incident-to-arrest exception applied and the applicability of such an exception was dependent upon all of the facts and circumstances viewed in their entirety. The Court stated that the state constitution requires that the Court be able to find a reasonable basis, articulable from the totality of the circumstances in each case, to justify a search. The Court stated that the instant case was clearly distinguishable from other cases in which the Court has upheld non-consensual searches under Article I, Section 4.
United States Constitution: The Court stated that the search clearly fell within the purview of New York v. Belton which established that arrest justifies the search of a vehicle’s passenger compartment, including any open or closed container in it, without consideration of the privacy interest involved.
The Court noted that the majority opinion was founded in Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution, particularly as interpreted and applied in O’Boyle and Vasquez, passim. The dissent relied almost entirely upon United States Supreme Court cases and the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court stated that the dissent’s argument was a plea for the adoption of a rule that officer safety always trumps a reasonableness analysis made under the totality of the circumstances when an arrest is made. It was also a plea to abandon O’Boyle and Vasquez and adopt the Belton bright-line rule that the Court previously rejected. United States v. Robinson, cited twice in the dissenting opinion in support of the concept of searching a vehicle incident to the arrest of its driver, involved a search of the arrestee’s person not his vehicle.

Holding: Having found that the search violated Article I, Section 4 of the Wyoming Constitution, the Court reversed the denial of Appellant’s suppression motion and remanded the matter to the district court.

Reversed and remanded.

C.J. Voigt delivered the opinion.

J. Burke dissented: He would have affirmed the district court’s decision that this was a valid search incident to arrest and reasonable under all of the circumstances. He felt the majority reached the opposite result by misapplying the standard of review, marginalizing officer safety as a factor to be weighed in the analysis and overlooking the most meaningful difference between the state and federal standards.

J. Hill dissented: He agreed with the material part of J. Burke’s dissent but wrote separately to emphasize his concern that the narrow slot carved out in the Vasquez case appeared to be widened by the majority decision in the instant case.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/38hov6 .