No Fault means No Fault and Outlandish Title Loan Rates Live On

Two new Iowa Supreme Court opinions today. One dealing with family law and one with title loans. I prefer these topics to Workers’ Compensation, so I guess I’m pleased with my reading material this morning.

In Re Marriage of Cooper – Mr. Cooper had an affair and Mrs. Cooper found out about it. They made a written reconciliation agreement that required that Mr. Cooper do certain things, should the affair cause a divorce. When Mr. Cooper moved out a few years later and a divorce followed, Mrs. Cooper tried to enforce the reconciliation agreement. The District Court basically followed the terms of the agreement, though it didn’t specifically say it was enforcing the agreement. The Court of Appeals upheld the award of temporary support (not timely appealed), but reversed any reliance on the agreement for the distribution of property.

Justice Appel’s opinion affirms the Court of Appeals, reversing the District Court on the issue of final property settlement. The Court determines that there is a public policy in Iowa against injecting fault into divorce proceedings. Even though Section 598.21(1)(k) seems to allow the Court to consider any agreements between the parties, this agreement attempted to regulate the conduct of spouses during the marriage and injected fault into the distribution of property. The agreement therefore goes against case law and policy. The Court holds the agreement unenforceable and further concludes that 598.21(1)(k) and 598.21(1)(m), the catchall, do not extend to unenforceable agreements. So, Courts can’t even consider a mutual agreement if it’s unenforceable.

I’m now trying to reconcile the question of whether 598.21(1)(k) has any value. If an agreement is enforceable, the Court should enforce it, rather than just consider it in making an equitable distribution of property, right? And if an agreement is unenforceable, the Court can’t even consider it, despite what I believe to be fairly clear language to the contrary in the statute itself. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Anderson Financial v. Miller – Here, Anderson Financial, doing business as Loan Max and Loan Smart (I honestly don’t think there’s anything smart about these loans, but that’s just me), asked the Attorney General for an opinion on how a new law limiting the interest rate on title loans would affect them. The Attorney General indicated that the law would not affect loans disbursed before July 1, 2007, but loans and advances made after that date, regardless of the date of the original agreement, would be subject to the new limits. Since this would keep Anderson from collecting its 200%-300% annual interest (the new law limits the interest to 21%), Anderson asked for a declaratory judgment from the Court. The District Court agreed with the Attorney General and Anderson appealed and the Supreme Court now considers it.

Chief Justice Ternus (interesting news about her husband and son this week) wrote this opinion reversing and remanding the District Court. The Supreme Court held that this is a substantive, not a remedial law. Without express or clearly implied evidence otherwise, a substantive law change applies only prospectively, not retroactively. As a result, Loan Max and Loan [Asinine] can continue to collect it’s 200%-300% on advances made under contracts that were made before July 1, 2007, regardless of when the loan disbursement is actually made. Hooray!

Supreme Court of Iowa, 7/17/09 – Back on the Horse

Kind of a slow day, so I decided to read and actually comment on the new supreme court cases posted today.

American Eyecare v. Department of Human Services – American Eyecare performed services for patients on Medicaid. DHS, as the agency in charge of Iowa’s Medicaid program, determined that American Eyecare had upcoded, or overbilled, Medicaid for services rendered. Justice Streit’s opinion vacates the Court of Appeals affirmance and reverses the District Court, an administrative law judge and DHS’ interpretation of DHS rules.

DHS made rules concerning when eye exams and such would be deemed “comprehensive opthalmological services”. In doing so, the defined that term as “including” a number of different procedures. DHS argued that, because American Eyecare didn’t perform all of the procedures listed in the definition, they could not bill for comprehensive opthalmological services.

The Court determined that the legislature did not clearly vest DHS with the power to interpret its own rules and, therefore, DHS’ interpretation deserved no deference, contrary to the findings of the lower Courts. On the merits, the Court found that DHS misinterpreted this rule, and that requiring all of the stated procedures would be illogical. As a result, American Eyecare did provide comprehensive opthalmological services because they performed one of the listed procedures.

Interestingly, DHS requested reimbursement for 964 patients after reviewing only two patient files. I have a feeling that this one wasn’t going to fly, either way.

Swainston v. American Family Mutual Insurance Company – The Swainstons were passengers in a car owned by someone else. The vehicle in which they were riding was hit by an oncoming van that crossed the center line, the driver of which was not insured. The Swainstons recovered under the insurance policy held by the driver of the vehicle in which they were riding, then made a claim under the uninsured driver provisions of their own auto insurance policy with American Family. American Family denied that it had any liability because they had already recovered (simplistic explanation). District Court granted summary judgment to American Family and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

Chief Justice Ternus’ opinion holds that the Swainstons should be allowed to recover under their own policy, as well. Their American Family policy did not specifically address “interpolicy stacking” of insurance coverage, so they are governed by the default rule. The default rule allows recovery up to the highest limit of applicable coverage. The vehicle owner’s insurance policy allowed $500,000 per incident and was the highest limit. However, the Swainstons didn’t recover $500,000 from State Farm, presumably because they had to split the coverage with others in the car, and the owner. As a result, the Swainstons could recover under their own policy, but not for a total recovery of more than $500,000. Summary judgment was reversed, as the District Court interpreted the default rule differently.

Drake University v. Angela Davis – This is a workers’ compensation decision. I tend to skip these opinions, since I don’t practice in that area. They seem to make up at least a third of what the Supreme Court is turning out these days, though. Maybe I should get into that line of work. There appears to be a lot of it.

In re the Detention of Galen Kendrick Schaffer – Schaffer was incarcerated in Anamosa after being convicted of three counts of 3rd degree sexual abuse. After a number of years, and a number of changes to the law regarding reduction of sentences, Schaffer was scheduled to be released July 2008. In October 2007, the State filed a petition to commit Schaffer as a sexually violent predator. Schaffer proceeded to seek postconviction relief challenging the changes to his sentence reduction as violating the Ex Post Facto clause of the constitution. He won on postconviction relief, then was successful in having the court dismiss the commitment action because he was not “presently confined” within the meaning of the relevant Iowa Code provisions. He argued that to be presently confined, he must have been confined legally.

Justice Cady’s opinion holds that, despite the fact that Schaffer’s release date change violated the Ex Post Facto clause, he was “presently confined” within the meaning of the statute. Since Schaffer never challenged the recalculated date of his release until after the State filed its commitment action, he was presently confined for a sexually violent offense, and the civil commitment action should not have been dismissed.

Property Taxes and the Iowa Supreme Court

So I’m catching up on my Iowa Supreme Court cases, today. I just finished Soifer v. Floyd County Board of Review and, have to say, I respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision, and the precedent it followed.

It appears clear to me that the assessed value of a property should be based solely on the property’s inherent value. Sure, you can say this property is set up as a restaurant, so it should have a similar value to other reastaurant properties. In Soifer, though, the Court says that the assessed value of a McDonald’s restaurant is best determined by comparing it to the sales of other fast-food franchise restaurants sold as going concerns, meaning that someone is buying both the real estate and the business.

To me, when you value something based on that much specificity of its use, you begin to add some of the value of the business as a going concern to the value you are taxing. You no longer are taxing just the value of the property, but also the intangible value that a particular business brings to the site.

In my opinion, properties should be valued as if they were empty, without any business to speak of. A restaurant is a restaurant, but you can certainly place a value on the land and the structure without looking at the success of the business that occupies the space.

I think this may be an issue that the legislature should take up, as there is a string of cases that the Court relied on in Soifer, and it doesn’t appear that they are making any plans to right the ship.

Let’s get ready to rumble!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, we’ll jump right in with the first new Iowa Supreme Court case of the day:

Capital Promotions, LLC v. Don King Productinos, Inc.- Capital sued Don King for intentional interference with a contractual relationship. Capital repped a fighter named Tye Fields who was a Des Moines native, lived in Missouri for some time and lived in Nevada when the alleged interference actually occurred. Capital is an Iowa LLC. The Court affirmed the decisions of the Court of Appeals and the District Court on Don King’s motion for summary judgment: Don King did not have sufficient contacts with the State of Iowa for the State to have personal jurisdiction over the company (Did someone say Fahrvergnügen?).

What about Don King’s hair? I imagine every time he drives through or flies over the Midwest some portion of his hair has contact with Iowa or its air space. Not enough? Oh. OK. But don’t blame me when it grows to such proportions that it blocks out the sun.

State v. Cowles- Sick, sick, sick, sick person. There are some of those out there. This is the State’s appeal on further review from the Iowa Court of Appeals. Cowles was charged with a multitude of separate counts concerning the sexual abuse of his daughter. He pled guilty to, among other things, one count of sexual abuse in the second degree. The parties asked for immediate sentencing and agreed that he should receive the maximum sentence of 25 years for that offense, a class B felony. Cowles was so sentenced and informed and understood that he would be required to serve no less than 70% of that sentence.

Cowles later asked the Court to correct his sentence, saying it was illegal because there was no admission that he committed any of the acts after July1, 1996, when the statute requiring the minimum sentence of 70% went into effect. The Court agreed and changed the sentence. The Court of Appeals upheld the order of the District Court.

The State sought further review, which gets us here. According to the Supremes, Cowles acknowledgment that he committed an act of this nature prior to February 3, 1997, Cowles admitting he committed such an act between April 9, 1996 and February 2, 1997, and Cowles acknowledging he wanted to plead guilty after being told he would have to serve 70% of the sentence mean that he made an “implicit admission” that he committed an act after July 1, 1996.

Thought I can’t say I like the guy, I can’t help but think this is a little weird. Since when is an implicit admission valid in criminal court? What happened to reasonable doubt? Hmmm…

State v. Johnson- The Court here decides that a District Court’s limitation on the actions of standby counsel in a criminal action is tried with the Defendant representing himself are OK. The Court told standby counsel that he could only give advice if the defendant asked him for it.

I was a little upset by this opinion when I first started reading it. As I got to the end where the District Court is quoted concerning the matter, I felt much better about it. Since there is no constitutional right to standby counsel, there is nothing wrong with the Court limiting the role of standby counsel.

Iowa Supreme Court mails it in

Two new opinions today. It must be vacation time. The opinions are identical per curiam opinions concerning civil commitment proceedings of sexually violaent predators. The Court disposed of all of their identical arguments in opinions decided while these two were pending. Maybe there will be more to look at next week.

More Iowa Supreme Court Action

Two new opinions today. The first is State v. Smith (they come up with the most unique case names). Anyway, the State appealed from an order granting Mr. Smith a new trial. Mr.  Smith pled guilty and waived his right to file a motion in arrest of judgment. The Court sentenced him, but failed to inform him of or sentence him to the mandatory lifetime supervision required as a result of his plea to a charge of sexual abuse as an habitual offender. Before resentencing, Mr. Smith filed a motion in arrest of judgment and application to withdraw his plea. The Court granted a new trial.

The Supreme Court of Iowa reversed the new trial grant, saying that this is a matter for post-conviction relief. First, the motion in arrest of judgment was not timely, second, Mr. Smith clearly waived his right to file the motion. So, Mr. Smith goes to jail.

The second case is State v. Helmers. This is another appeal by the State. They’re appealing the bifurcation of Mr. Helmers’ stalking trial. The District Court granted Mr. Helmers’ motion to bifurcate the issues of stalking and the existence of a no-contact order because the probative value of the no-contact order is substantially outweighed by the prejudice it would create. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded saying that the no-contact order was the best evidence the State had of the complaining witness’ displeasure with Mr. Helmers’ actions. According to the Supreme Court, any prejudiced could be “lessoned” (apparently law clerks have a hard time spelling) by an instruction to the jury on the limited use for which the evidence was available. The Court chose not to decide the general issue of whether or not bifurcation of different elements of a crime is allowed under the rules.

Helmers also appealed the District Court’s order posponing ruling on his motion in limine concerning evidence of prior bad acts. The Supreme Court said that, since Mr. Helmers didn’t raise any specific instances of bad acts, only a blanket motion covering all bad acts, the District Court couldn’t really evaluate the evidence. I think Mr. Helmers is probably not “Glee”ful about this opinion.

Supreme Court of Iowa, Come on Down!

Two new opinions today:

State v. Shipley – Defendant who’s license is suspended for OWI test failure claimed that the admission of a certified abstract of his operational record without any foundational testimony violated a number of statutes and rules, not to mention the Confrontational Clause. Justice Appel, as usual, gives us a nice in-depth discussion of … zzzzzzzzzzzz … huh? Oh, sorry. A nod, though, to Justice Appel for using the word “curtsied” in his opinion (see p. 17). The bottom line is that the State offering a certified abstract of a defendant’s operation record without any foundational testimony doesn’t violate any statue or the Confrontation Clause. So, the Court vacated the Court of Appeals opinion and affirmed the District Court judgment.

In the Interest of K.B. – Another case on further review from the Court of Appeals. This one involves a change in custody ordered by the Juvenlie Court at a review hearing during a CINA proceeding. The legal guardian of the child lost her representation to a judicial appointment and was never appointed a new attorney. She received the DHS report at the time of the hearing and did not consent to the change. Nonetheless, the Court didn’t hold any evidentiary hearings and changed custody. The Court vacated the decision of the Court of Appeals (Guardians statement at the hearing was, ”I don’t agree, and I think K.B.’s been through  enough, and she needs to stay home with me”. Now that’s consent.) and reversing the District Court. They also added instructions to the District Court: “Before proceeding further, the juvenile court  should ensure that E.A.B.’s right to counsel, as set forth in section 232.89, is not violated.” Ouch. I don’t think I’d want that reprimand from the Supreme Court of Iowa, if I was a judge.

That’s all the fun for today.

Mmmm…Tasty

With the caption of the case reading “The Pillsbury Company, Inc. v. Wells Dairy, Inc.“, you would expect the Iowa Supreme Court’s newest opinion to be fairly sweet. It turns out it’s a contracts case and an appeal of a grant of summary judgment, at that.

Pillsbury (dough-boy giggle) entered into a contract with Wells (has anyone ever actually seen a blue bunny?) whereby Wells (I never realized they make Bomb Pops) would make Haagen-Dazs (I’m not sure I’ve ever tried it) ice cream. Wells (their Light 85 (now just “Light”) yogurt is pretty good) suffered an explosion at one of its plants and production was interrupted. Pillsbury (I haven’t tried the toaster strudel, but it looks good) later assigned its interest in Haagen-Dasz (interesting flavors, though) to a new joint venture with Nestle’s (mmm…chocolate). Pillsbury (they make Totino’s, too?) later sued Wells (I think Weight Watchers ice cream treats is an oxymoron) over its lost profits related to the explosion.

The fight is first about whether Pillsbury (I’m a big fan of biscuits) is the real party in interest. The District Court said it’s not, because of the assignment. The Supreme Court says the assignment is ambiguous as to whether the claim against Wells (ooo…chocolate malt cups) was actually assigned, so there should be no summary judgment on that basis.

Wells’ (BIG Mississippi Mud Ice Cream Sandwich doesn’t sound that appetizing) second argument is that the force majeure clause in the contract between Wells (hmmm…Jolly Rancher Ice Pop) and Pillsbury (crescent rolls!) lets Wells (Cool Tubes Orange Sherbet will cool you off) off the hook. They’re reading it in such a way that for most force majeure incidents, it doesn’t matter whether Wells (Bunny Tracks is pretty good) could have reasonably prevented the explosion, the clause says they don’t have any liability. The Supreme Court tells Wells (I’m running out of interesting products) that you actually have to read the whole clause and read it within the context of the rest of the contract and its execution. Using Minnesota law (as pleaded by the parties) the Court decides that Wells’ (they have a variety of ice cream bars) reading is incorrect and that Pillsbury (maybe I should try to enter the bake-off), or whomever is the real party in interest, should be allowed to try to prove that Wells (even king size cones) could have reasonably prevented the explosion.

FOOD FIGHT!

Things I learned today from the Iowa Supreme Court

Two new opinions from the Iowa Supreme Court, today. The first dealt again with a challenge to the 2000 foot living restriction for sex offenders. The second again covering what the Public Defender’s Office must pay court appointed attorneys. Here’s what I learned:

Wright v. Iowa Department of Corrections – It doesn’t pay to have or have had sex with children. The living restriction on sex offenders applies to all sex offenders who perped on children, regardless of whether they are required to register.

State Public Defender v. Iowa District Court for Plymouth County - The State Public Defender’s Office likes to quibble. The SPD denied a $125 attorney fee claim in a CINA case because the client – a member of the National Guard deployed in Afghanistan – didn’t include any family members on his application, which was not signed by him and was filled out by the Clerk’s Office with information he provided over the telephone from Afghanistan.

Of course, as any good journalist would do, I failed to give you the whole story. Only the stuff that I think makes for good reading. Did it work? Are you angry at the SPD? Read the opinion and then talk to me.

New Iowa Supreme Court Justice

Congrats to the Honorable David Baker, currently a judge on the Iowa Court of Appeals, who has been appointed to be the next Iowa Supreme Court Justice. He has had somewhat a meteoric rise in the ranks of judges in Iowa. He was appointed to the District Bench in Linn County in 2005, then to the Court of appeals in 2006, now in 2008 to the Iowa Supreme Court. Score one for Corridor lawyers.