Case Title: Reeves v. Boatman

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: wyoming

Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Date: 1989-02-28T00:00:00Z

Document:
Reeves v. Boatman1989 WY 56769 P.2d 917Case Number: 88-206Decided: 02/28/1989Supreme Court of Wyoming
WILLIAM 
REEVES, APPELLANT (PLAINTIFF),

 
 
v.

 
 
WILLIAM 
BOATMAN, APPELLEE (DEFENDANT).

 
 
Appeal from 
the District Court, TetonCounty, Robert B. Ranck, 
J.

 
 
William R. 
Fix, Jackson, for appellant.

 
 
Floyd R. 
King, Jackson, for appellee.

 
 
Before CARDINE, C.J., and THOMAS, URBIGKIT, MACY 
and GOLDEN, JJ.

 
 

URBIGKIT, 
Justice.

 
 

[¶1.]     The effect of a 
litigant's failure to answer a request for W.R.C.P. 36 admissions appears as an 
appellate issue within the sufficiency of evidence inquiry for contended 
judgment reversal.

 
 

[¶2.]     We 
affirm.

 
 

[¶3.]     Plaintiff William 
Reeves, as appellant, and defendant William Boatman, as appellee, were arguably 
involved for a time in an outfitting partnership in the Jackson, Wyoming area. The business, by trial time, had 
been sold and sales proceeds of about $9,000 to $10,000 remained in escrow in a 
Jackson bank. A third "partner," Dr. Donald Bricker, was originally sued by 
appellant but settled out before trial. After a two-day trial, appellant was 
awarded a judgment for $1,700, and he now appeals on the basis of the 
insufficiency of the amount recovered.

 
 

[¶4.]     This is an unusual 
sufficiency of the evidence appeal. Appellant submitted requests for admission 
to appellee which were never answered.1 Based on the "admissions," 
appellant now contends that the trial court erred in the minuscule judgment 
granted. Conversely, appellee, by his successor counsel, contends that 
appellant, in his testimony, contradicted what had been deemed admitted so that 
factual issues were provided for trial court decision. In part, what makes the 
case factually interesting is that the "admitting" party arguably did not create 
the factual dispute but rather the differences between the admissions and what 
the benefitting party testified to at trial created the factual conflicts. We 
will resolve the case without a determination that appellant disproved the 
admissions which he had obtained.

 
 

[¶5.]     This appeal asks us to 
resolve that settled material issues of fact were ignored by the trial court. 
Consequently, appellant asks for reversal on the basis of an insufficiency of 
evidence to sustain the decision or, more specifically, the minimal amount of 
money judgment granted. Our decision is made on the basis that the admissions in 
themselves did not settle all issues of factual dispute.

 
 

[¶6.]     In general outline of 
the confused nature of this case, Dr. Bricker put up the money and acquired the 
Wyoming 
hunting camp. Appellee came to be either his agent or partner and appellant 
thereafter became involved in some additional fashion which may have included a 
cash contribution. The evidence is clear that the hunting camp was in the name 
of a corporation, Teton Financial & Leasing, Inc., which briefly entered the 
litigation as a third-party plaintiff and, as abruptly, was stricken. Dr. 
Bricker was the sole shareholder of the corporation. Dr. Bricker, a resident of 
Texas, wanted out of the Wyoming hunting camp 
business and ultimately, through involvement of appellee, sold the business and 
it is the proceeds of sale which appellant now sues to share. The case was 
actually more complex since Dr. Bricker denied that either appellee or appellant 
were ever partners. It is not clear how the $9,000 to $10,000 in escrow in the 
Jackson bank relates to the entire sales proceeds, but at least it is reasonably 
clear that whatever Dr. Bricker got out of the transaction was nothing in excess 
of what his investments had been.2 

 
 

[¶7.]     While still in the 
litigation, Dr. Bricker submitted twenty-eight requests for admission to 
appellant which were all denied. After a complex course of pleadings, including 
discovery proceedings and a motion of appellee's attorney to withdraw for fee 
nonpayment and after Dr. Bricker settled out in February 1988, appellant 
submitted a request for admission to appellee in May as including the 
following:

 
 
     REQUEST FOR ADMISSION 
NO. 1.

 
 
That a 
partnership existed among William Boatman, Donald Bricker, and William 
Reeves.

 
 
     REQUEST FOR ADMISSION 
NO. 2.

 
 
That a 
partnership among William Boatman, Donald Bricker, and William Reeves commenced 
in 1983.

 
 
      REQUEST FOR 
ADMISSION NO. 3.

 
 
That a 
partnership now exists among William Boatman, Donald Bricker, and William 
Reeves.

 
 
     REQUEST FOR ADMISSION 
NO. 4.

 
 
That the 
Plaintiff William Reeves contributed a total $18,600.00 to the partnership as a 
capital contribution.

 
 
     REQUEST FOR ADMISSION 
NO. 5.

 
 
That a 
partnership existed between William Boatman and Donald 
Bricker.

 
 
     REQUEST FOR ADMISSION 
NO. 6.

 
 
That a 
partnership now exists between William Boatman and Donald 
Bricker.

 
 

[¶8.]     Appellee did not answer 
and after a change of counsel, the case came to trial with the unanswered 
requests apparently not discussed in trial court proceedings until opening 
statement as then by a preliminary inquiry by appellant's counsel as to 
dispositive effect. As the tangled tale unwound at trial, four witnesses 
testified in behalf of appellant and portions of a deposition taken from Dr. 
Bricker were read in open court and three witnesses testified in behalf of 
appellee.

 
 

[¶9.]     Accepting the 
admissions to establish those facts for the purpose of the litigation between 
these two parties does not decide what is owed to whom and why so; leaving no 
further analysis of the evidence required by the trial judge. It is apparent 
that even with these admissions and after considering all of the testimony, 
factual disputes remained for the trial court out of the complex and convoluted 
relationships. The trial court was further required to continue by analysis 
about the kind of relationship claimed by the litigants in the nature of an oral 
partnership and how proceeds to be realized from the real owner, Dr. Bricker, 
were then to be divided between themselves.

 
 

[¶10.]  Actually, Dr. Bricker sold the camp to an 
external party for $45,000 and, in his testimony, denied that he ever was a 
partner with either of the other litigants and particularly so since the hunting 
camp was in a corporation of which he was the sole shareholder. For him, it was 
indeed a no profit operation. Taking as established what is included as the 
substance of the request for admission between the two remaining litigants, we 
would still discern sufficient conflicts in evidence to factually justify the 
decision rendered by the trial court. In this analysis, the case comes within 
the sufficiency of the evidence inquiry for appellate review.3

 
 

[¶11.]  The trial court, in dispositive written 
judgment, analyzed the case in part:

 
 
The Court 
has drafted this Judgment three times. The third time is a 
charm.

 
 
This is a 
difficult case because someone is lying. Maybe everyone is 
lying.

 
 
It is true 
that the defendant failed to respond to Request for Admissions and the law in 
that regard is clear. On the other hand, it is clear that Mr. Reeves testified 
contrary to the Admissions during his testimony. It is also clear to the Court 
that some of the money in escrow at Jackson State Bank belongs to Mr. Reeves. 
The question is - how much?

 
 
This is a 
most difficult case.

 
 

[¶12.]  The fact that certain contentions are 
deemed admitted (although probably in part at least questionable, if not 
actually untrue) by failure of the litigant to deny does not demonstrate trial 
court error where the subject of the admissions is not sufficient to cover all 
aspects of the inquiry required to settle the litigants' relationship. We find 
no error in decision within this record. It was well-characterized in appellee's 
brief as confusing, contradictory and frequently of little probative value 
"[where] [t]he District Court had the unenviable task of sorting through various 
guesses, suppositions, innuendos and vague references in order to get to the 
truth."4

 
 

[¶13.]  It is a well-established principle of 
this court that it will affirm the decision of the trial court where sustainable 
in the record on any proper legal theory. Kane v. Kane, 706 P.2d 676 (Wyo. 1985). The effect of 
admissions pursuant to W.R.C.P. 36(b) does not mean that the favored litigant is 
necessarily absolved from further proof to justify recovery or establish its 
amount if all dispositive facts involving recovery were not included in the 
undenied admissions. Ark-Tenn Distributing Corp. v. Breidt, 209 F.2d 359 (3d 
Cir. 1954); Woods v. Robb, 171 F.2d 539 (5th Cir. 1948); General Acc. Fire & 
Life Assur. Corp. v. Cohen, 203 Va. 810, 127 S.E.2d 399 (1962).5

 
 

[¶14.]  With some facts established and many 
contentions in controversy, we consider the sufficiency of the evidence and 
sustain the trial court in conclusion.

 
 

[¶15.]  AFFIRMED.

 
 
FOOTNOTES

 
 

1 Neither original nor 
successor counsel for appellee moved, pursuant to the second sentence of 
W.R.C.P. 36(b), to permit a belated answer or withdraw what was, in effect, an 
admission. Consequently, the discretion of the court issues, which has been 
generously considered in many cases, was not presented to the trial court in 
this case for resolution. Smith v. First Nat. Bank of Atlanta, 837 F.2d 1575 (11th Cir.), cert. denied ___ 
U.S. ___, 109 S. Ct. 64, 102 L. Ed. 2d 41 (1988); Bergemann v. United States, 820 F.2d 1117 (10th 
Cir. 1987); Rainbolt v. Johnson, 669 F.2d 767 (D.C. Cir. 1981). Cf. 
United 
States v. Kasuboski, 834 F.2d 1345 (7th Cir. 
1987), where a motion to withdraw default in answering admissions was not 
filed.

 
 

2 Principally, the case 
reveals that for a Texas physician to get 
involved in a Jackson hunting camp with these litigants was, 
at best, described as high risk.

 
 

3 The division of sales 
proceeds between appellee and Dr. Bricker looked more like a finders fee or 
sales commission than division of partnership property sale receipts. The record 
does not reflect the basis for the settlement by Dr. Bricker with appellant 
during litigation.

 
 

4 The trial court 
observed during trial:

 
 
     Very clear[ly] 
somebody's not telling the truth, and you have an interesting group of witnesses 
that you've asked me to rely upon. Mr. Roof who's been convicted of two 
felonies. And Mr. Kling who really didn't know anything. Mr. Wendell Campbell 
whose testimony I crossed off. I'm not - he didn't tell me anything at all. His 
testimony is totally without any credence whatsoever. And now I'm going to 
become a handwriting expert and I'm not going to do that, but I'll receive those 
exhibits in evidence but I'm not going to look at them. These request for 
admissions are becoming more important all the time now. I want some information 
on these.

 
 
     Appellee had 
originally involved Dr. Bricker in the hunting camp on a "lease out with him" 
arrangement in 1982. In 1983, appellee and appellant, an Arizona rancher, became 
acquainted from which their curious relationship in the hunting camp operation 
ultimately developed. The relationship of appellant to Dr. Bricker appears, at 
least by Dr. Bricker's testimony, to be that of a potential purchaser to whom 
this bad investment could be unloaded. Obviously, appellant, like appellee, was 
less than fully funded.

 
 

5 We are well aware 
that one or more of these cases has been criticized as according weight to the 
admissions equal only to sworn testimony which, as a contention, was 
dispositively rejected by an amendment to W.R.C.P. 36 in 1971. The principle, 
however, remains sound that the scope of admissions reaches no further than the 
extent of the subject matter recited. See 4A Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 36.08 at 36-68 and ¶ 
36.04 at 36-44 (1988). "[M]atters admitted after a failure to answer a request 
are only deemed admitted as stated in the request." 23 Am.Jur.2d Depositions and 
Discovery § 328 at 621 (1983). "Matters admitted for want of an answer to a 
request for admissions are admitted only as stated in the request." General Acc. 
Fire & Life Assur. Corp., 127 S.E.2d  at 402.