2018 UT App 42

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

WADE S. WINEGAR AND SANDRA WINEGAR,

Appellants,

v.

SPRINGVILLE CITY, BILL CHILD, AND JASON RIDING,

Appellees.

Opinion

No. 20160364-CA

Filed March 22, 2018

Fourth District Court, Provo Department

The Honorable Claudia Laycock

No. 070401317

Wade S. Winegar, Attorney for Appellants

Robert C. Keller and Timothy J. Bywater, Attorneys

for Appellees

JUDGE MICHELE M. CHRISTIANSEN authored this Opinion, in 

which JUDGES KATE A. TOOMEY and RYAN M. HARRIS concurred.

CHRISTIANSEN, Judge:

¶1 Wade S. Winegar and Sandra Winegar appeal the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Springville City

(the City), Bill Child, and Jason Riding. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

¶2 The Winegars owned vacant property along Hobble 

Creek in Springville, Utah. In May 2005, without the Winegars’ 

knowledge or permission, the City moved heavy equipment 

across the Winegars’ property as part of an effort to clear an upstream obstruction in the creek, damaging the Winegars’ 

property.
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 2 2018 UT App 42

¶3 Approximately eight months later, on January 27, 2006, 

the Winegars filed a notice of claim for damage to their property 

with the Springville City Clerk. The clerk transferred the notice

of claim to the City Attorney, who began communicating with 

the Winegars about their claim.

¶4 On March 20, an entity named Utah Risk Management 

Mutual Association (URMMA) sent a letter to the Winegars, 

which read:

Our investigation into the claim you have made 

against Springville City for damage to your 

landscaping and property . . . is now complete.

Our investigation indicates that Springville City 

would not be held legally liable for any damages 

you may have sustained. The City has an easement 

on the property which allows [it] to enter the creek 

bed. [It] also [has] authority to take measures to 

clean out and maintain the creek bed to prevent 

flooding that might damage other property 

downstream.

Because the City would not be held liable, we must 

respectfully decline to make any voluntary 

payments on this claim.

The letter was signed by Lyle Kunz, a claims adjuster, and a 

copy was sent to the City Attorney.

¶5 A few weeks later, on April 9, Mr. Winegar sent a letter to 

the City Attorney, purportedly following up on a telephone 

conversation from the previous Friday, April 7. Mr. Winegar 

indicated that he needed to amend his claim to include the 

names of the individual employees “involved in cutting trees on 

the subject property” and “the names of all those involved in the 

decision-making process, direction and supervision of this 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 3 2018 UT App 42

project.” According to the letter, the City Attorney had advised 

the Winegars to request those names in writing.

¶6 URMMA responded to the Winegars’ letter on April 20:

Your letter dated April 9, 2006, addressed to [the 

City Attorney], has been referred to us for a 

response . . . .

Your claim was denied on March 20, 2006. We are 

not prepared to continue negotiations with you by 

providing the information you have requested in 

your letter. If you [choose] to not accept our denial 

and if you [choose] to move this claim to the next 

step, your attorney can gather this information 

through the discovery process of the court 

[system].

¶7 On April 24, Mr. Winegar sent a letter to URMMA and the 

City Attorney, in which he acknowledged URMMA’s “outright 

denial of the claim.” Nevertheless, Mr. Winegar reiterated that 

he needed to include the employees’ names on the notice of 

claim and recounted his April 7 conversation with the City 

Attorney: “In our conversation on April 7, [the City Attorney] 

and I discussed what would happen if these names were not 

provided. We concluded the only alternative was for me to 

amend my claim . . . to include the unidentified employees . . . .”

Mr. Winegar stated that, by means of his letter, he was 

“amend[ing the] claim to include not only Springville City but 

all the unidentified employees who participated in any aspect of 

the work done at the above listed property, participated in the 

decision-making to do such work[,] or carried trees or timber off 

the property.” He also requested that URMMA or the City 

Attorney notify him immediately “[i]f you believe I must follow 

a different process to amend my claim.”
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 4 2018 UT App 42

¶8 URMMA responded to the Winegars’ April 24 letter on 

May 10:

A review of [the April 24] letter indicates that it 

would not qualify as an amended Notice of Claim 

since it is not directed to the right department 

within the City.

Even if it did qualify as an amended Notice of 

Claim, we do not believe that there is any 

significant additional information that would cause 

us to change our decision on the City’s liability. We 

must therefore stand on the original denial which 

was conveyed to you in our letter dated March 20, 

2006.

¶9 On April 24, 2007, the Winegars filed a complaint against 

the City in district court. The City moved for summary 

judgment, asserting that the Winegars’ April 24, 2007 complaint 

was untimely because the Governmental Immunity Act of Utah

(the Act) requires a claimant to pursue a civil action within one 

year after denial of a claim, and the City had denied the 

Winegars’ claim on March 20, 2006. See Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-

403(2) (LexisNexis 2016).1 The district court granted the City’s 

motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case with 

prejudice. The Winegars appealed.

¶10 In Winegar v. Springville City (Winegar I), 2014 UT App 9, 

319 P.3d 1, this court vacated the entry of summary judgment

and remanded the case to the district court. Id. ¶ 1. There, the

Winegars argued that URMMA’s March 20 letter was not 

“actually a denial of their claim because the letter did not 

 

1. The parties cite the 2016 version of the Act, which was the 

version in effect at the time they filed their briefs on appeal. We 

follow suit.
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 5 2018 UT App 42

explicitly say the claim was denied but rather stated that 

URMMA ‘must respectfully decline to make any voluntary 

payments on [the] claim.’” Id. ¶ 15 (alteration in original). The 

Winegars also argued that under the Act, only the governmental 

entity or its insurance carrier can approve or deny a claim, see 

Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-403(1)(a), and that “URMMA, not the 

City, wrote the March 20 letter and the letter did not identify 

URMMA as the City’s insurer,” Winegar I, 2014 UT App 9, ¶ 15. 

This court noted that the March 20 letter was on URMMA 

letterhead and signed only by a “claims adjuster.” Id. ¶ 20. 

Observing that the City had failed to introduce any evidence 

establishing that URMMA was its insurer when URMMA sent 

the March 20 letter to the Winegars, this court concluded that the 

City could not establish, for purposes of summary judgment, 

that it had denied the Winegars’ claim in the March 20 letter. Id.

¶11 On remand, the parties engaged in discovery for the first 

time and took the depositions of, among others, the City 

Attorney and Mr. Winegar. Mr. Winegar testified in his 

deposition that he “had been working exclusively with [the City 

Attorney], and out of the blue got a letter from Lyle Kunz.” He 

testified that he had “assumed [Lyle Kunz] was an adjuster” and 

that “he had some involvement in the process.” During his 

deposition, the City Attorney testified that Lyle Kunz “was a 

claims adjuster for URMMA, who was our insurer at the time” of 

the March 20 letter. The City Attorney considered the March 20 

letter to be a denial of the Winegars’ claim. In May 2015, the 

Winegars amended their complaint to include claims against Bill 

Child and Jason Riding, two City employees who were involved 

in clearing the obstruction in 2005.

¶12 The City, Child, and Riding (collectively, Defendants)

moved for summary judgment on several grounds. First, 

Defendants asserted that the Winegars had failed to strictly 

comply with the Act. Specifically, Defendants asserted (1) that 

the City had denied the Winegars’ claim on March 20, 2006, and 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 6 2018 UT App 42

that the Winegars had failed to initiate their district court action 

within one year of that denial; (2) that the Winegars’ notice of 

claim failed to “both identify the name of the individual 

employees and describe the nature of [the] claim[s] asserted 

against the individual employee[s]”; and (3) that the Winegars’ 

claims against Child and Riding were untimely, as those claims 

were first asserted in May 2015 in the Winegars’ amended 

complaint. According to Defendants, these deficiencies deprived 

the district court of subject matter jurisdiction. Next, Defendants 

asserted that Child and Riding were immune from liability 

because they were acting within the course and scope of their 

employment when they cleared the obstruction. Lastly, 

Defendants asserted that, under the Act, the City was immune

from the Winegars’ intentional trespass claims and from suits 

arising out of the management of its flood waters and the repair 

and operation of its storm water system. Defendants submitted

several exhibits in support of their motion, including transcripts 

of the City Attorney’s and Mr. Winegar’s depositions.

¶13 After a hearing, the district court concluded that the 

Winegars’ “failure to file their action within the one-year 

statutory time period deprive[d the] court of subject matter 

jurisdiction.” The court noted that it “now ha[d] sufficient 

undisputed evidence before it to determine that . . . URMMA 

was the insurer of the [City]” in March 2006 and all other 

relevant time periods, and that Mr. Winegar had “acknowledged 

that he assumed that the letter he received ‘out of the blue’ from 

Kunz meant that Kunz was an insurance adjuster.” The court 

then determined that the Winegars’ claim had been denied on 

March 20, 2006, because the March 20 letter was “sufficiently 

clear” and could “only be construed as a denial of claim.” The 

court observed that Kunz had “reiterated the denial of claim in 

letters dated April 20, 2006 and May 10, 2006.” The court also 

noted that, “[e]ven if [it] were to conclude that the March 20, 

2006 letter ‘used vague and non-statutory language,’” the April 

20, 2006 letter, which was sent more than one year before the 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 7 2018 UT App 42

complaint was filed, “cleared up any possible ambiguity” based 

on Kunz’s statement, “Your claim was denied on March 20, 

2006.”

¶14 Additionally, the court concluded that the Winegars’ 

April 24 letter was not an amended notice of claim for three 

reasons: (1) the letter was delivered to the wrong City 

department, as it “was served on the city attorney . . . and not on 

the city clerk”; (2) the Act “does not provide for an amendment 

of claim”; and (3) “there [was] no evidence before the court that 

the [City] stipulated to allow the [Winegars] to amend their 

notice of claim or to reset the statutory filing requirements of the 

[Act].” The court observed that after the Winegars sent the April 

24 letter, URMMA sent the May 10 letter notifying them that 

“the purported amended notice of claim/letter was sent to the 

wrong department, that it was not an amended notice of claim, 

and that the claim had originally been denied on March 20, 

2006.” The court also rejected the Winegars’ argument that the 

City should be “estopped from bringing forth defenses under 

the [Act],” observing that URMMA had notified the Winegars on 

March 20, April 20, and May 10 that their claim had been denied

and that the City had “never made a written statement which 

was inconsistent with the defenses now asserted.”

¶15 Regarding the Winegars’ claims against Child and Riding

individually, the court concluded that (1) the Winegars had 

“failed to provide sufficient information in their notice of claim 

to reasonably alert [Defendants] that the [Winegars] were suing 

any City employees individually, and certainly not Child and 

Riding individually,” and (2) the Winegars’ “purported 

amended notice of claim letter from April 24, 2006 fails to 

identify the employees and contains no allegations that the 

employees’ acts constituted malicious or fraudulent conduct.”

See Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-401(3)(a)(iv) (LexisNexis 2016). The 

court also concluded that the Winegars’ claims against Child and 

Riding failed because their May 2015 amended complaint 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 8 2018 UT App 42

“added claims not included in the original notice of claim.” In 

addition, the court determined that both employees’ conduct 

was within the scope of their employment and that “[t]he 

undisputed evidence demonstrates that [they] were not acting 

willfully or maliciously outside the scope of their employment in 

an effort to injure the [Winegars].” Lastly, the court concluded 

that the City had immunity “from claims arising from 

intentional trespass” and “from suit for actions relating to the 

management of the City’s flood water and the maintenance and 

operation of its storm water system.”

¶16 The district court granted Defendants’ motion for 

summary judgment and dismissed the case. The Winegars 

appeal.

ISSUE AND STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶17 The Winegars contend that the district court erred in 

granting summary judgment in favor of Defendants. We review 

the district court’s “legal conclusions and ultimate grant or 

denial of summary judgment for correctness.” Jones & Trevor 

Mktg., Inc. v. Lowry, 2012 UT 39, ¶ 9, 284 P.3d 630 (citation and 

internal quotation marks omitted). “Summary judgment is 

appropriate when there are no genuine issues of material fact 

and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law,”

viewing the facts and all reasonable inferences drawn therefrom 

in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Id.

ANALYSIS

¶18 The Utah Supreme Court has “consistently and uniformly 

held that suit may not be brought against the state or its 

subdivisions unless the requirements of [the Act] are strictly 

followed.” Wheeler v. McPherson, 2002 UT 16, ¶ 11, 40 P.3d 632 

(citation and internal quotation marks omitted). The Act 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 9 2018 UT App 42

mandates that “[a]ny person having a claim against a 

governmental entity . . . shall file a written notice of claim with 

the entity before maintaining an action.” Utah Code Ann. § 63G7-401(2) (LexisNexis 2016). The notice of claim must be filed 

within one year after the claim arises, id. § 63G-7-402, and must 

contain (i) “a brief statement of the facts”; (ii) “the nature of the 

claim asserted”; (iii) “the damages incurred by the claimant so 

far as they are known”; and (iv) “if the claim is being pursued 

against a governmental employee individually . . . , the name of 

the employee,” id. § 63G-7-401(3)(a).

¶19 The Act further provides that “[w]ithin 60 days of the 

filing of a notice of claim, the governmental entity or its 

insurance carrier shall inform the claimant in writing that the 

claim has either been approved or denied.” Id. § 63G-7-403(1)(a). 

“A claim is considered to be denied if, at the end of the 60-day 

period, the governmental entity or its insurance carrier has failed 

to approve or deny the claim.” Id. § 63G-7-403(1)(b). Once a 

claim is denied, “a claimant may institute an action in the district 

court against the governmental entity or an employee of the 

entity.” Id. § 63G-7-403(2)(a). Importantly, “a claimant shall 

commence the action within one year after denial of the claim or 

within one year after the denial period . . . has expired.” Id. 

§ 63G-7-403(2)(b).

¶20 At oral argument before this court, the Winegars 

conceded that they did not strictly comply with the Act’s 

requirement that they file suit within one year of the denial of 

their claim. See id. They also acknowledged in their briefing that 

their notice of claim failed to include the names of the City

employees “who committed damage to the Winegars’ property.” 

Nevertheless, the Winegars maintain that the City should be 

estopped from seeking dismissal of their complaint. They also 

contend that the City failed to strictly comply with the terms of 

the Act.
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 10 2018 UT App 42

I. Estoppel

¶21 The Winegars contend that the City made several 

“intentional misrepresentations” and should therefore be 

estopped from asserting the one-year limitations period for filing 

a complaint, see Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-403(2)(b), and from 

seeking dismissal of the case. Specifically, they assert that the 

City (1) repeatedly withheld “information needed to properly 

file a claim which then created the need for an amendment”; 

(2) agreed to an amended notice of claim “to fix their 

withholding of information [and] then repudiat[ed] the 

agreement”; and (3) misinformed the Winegars that the deemeddenied period was 90 days rather than the statutory 60-day 

period. According to the Winegars, the City should be estopped 

from benefitting from this misconduct.

¶22 “There are three elements to estoppel: (1) an admission, 

statement, or act inconsistent with the claim afterwards asserted, 

(2) action by the other party on the faith of such admission, 

statement, or act, and (3) injury to such other party resulting 

from allowing the first party to contradict or repudiate such 

admission, statement, or act.” Monarrez v. Utah Dep’t of Transp., 

2016 UT 10, ¶ 35, 368 P.3d 846 (citation and internal quotation 

marks omitted). “[T]he usual rules of estoppel do not apply 

against the government, however, and courts must be cautious 

in applying equitable estoppel against the [government].” Id. 

(first alteration in original) (citations and internal quotation 

marks omitted). “Accordingly, estoppel is applied against the 

[government] only if necessary to prevent manifest injustice, and 

the exercise of governmental powers will not be impaired as a 

result.” Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

¶23 In Monarrez, our supreme court noted that in the context 

of the Act, “no published case [had] directly addressed what 

kind of statement may estop the government entity from 

asserting that a claim was untimely,” but that the court had 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 11 2018 UT App 42

“insisted on strict compliance with the terms of [the Act] even in 

the face of potentially intentional misrepresentations about how 

to comply with the notice provisions of [the Act].” Id. ¶ 37. 

“Thus, in order to estop [a government entity] from asserting 

[the Act’s] one year limitations period as a defense, there must 

be a specific, written representation directly related to that issue, 

such as a statement that [the complainant] had satisfied [the 

Act’s] requirements or that the government would not assert the 

defense in litigation.” Id.; see also Wheeler v. McPherson, 2002 UT 

16, ¶ 18, 40 P.3d 632 (“[G]overnmental entities are estopped from 

raising the Immunity Act as a defense where their statements 

induce plaintiffs into delay[ing] filing [an] action, or where such 

statements mislead plaintiffs into filing [a] notice of claim 

incorrectly.” (second and third alterations in original) (citation 

and internal quotation marks omitted)).

A. Withholding Information

¶24 The Winegars first assert that the names of the City 

employees “who committed damage to [the] Winegars’ 

property” “were needed to properly file a notice of claim” and 

that the City “refused to disclose the names of these employees 

in order to file the notice of claim.” This argument is 

inadequately briefed.

¶25 Defendants correctly observe that the Winegars have not 

cited any “evidence in the record of any occasion during the 

more than eight months after May 3 or 4, 2005, when their claims 

arose, and prior to January 27, 2006, when they served their 

notice, where the Winegars made even the slightest effort to 

learn the names of [the employees].” See generally Davis v. Central 

Utah Counseling Center, 2006 UT 52, ¶ 48, 147 P.3d 390 (“Plaintiffs 

must exercise the diligence necessary to effect strict compliance 

with the Immunity Act.”). Additionally, the Winegars have not 

cited any record evidence demonstrating that the City refused to 

disclose this information before the Winegars filed their notice of 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 12 2018 UT App 42

claim. Indeed, this section of the Winegars’ brief does not 

contain a single citation to the record. See Utah R. App. 

P. 24(a)(8) (requiring an appellant’s brief to “explain, with 

reasoned analysis supported by citations to legal authority and 

the record, why the party should prevail on appeal” (emphasis 

added)). Because the Winegars have not adequately briefed this 

argument, they have failed to carry their burden of persuasion 

on appeal.

B. Agreement to Amend

¶26 The Winegars next assert that the City Attorney agreed to 

allow them to amend their notice of claim “to remedy the 

[City’s] refusal to give individual names to include on it,” that 

the City then repudiated the agreement, and that the City 

“should be estopped from benefitting from [its] misconduct.”

¶27 Before we address the merits of the Winegars’ argument, 

we make two observations. First, we see nothing in the Act that 

permits the amendment of a notice of claim, and the Winegars 

have not directed us to any such provision. Second, the 

Winegars’ assertion that the City Attorney agreed to an 

amended notice of claim suffers from a lack of evidentiary 

support. The only evidence the Winegars point to is Mr. 

Winegar’s April 24 letter, in which he recounted his version of 

the April 7 telephone conversation with the City Attorney. 

According to the April 24 letter, Mr. Winegar and the City 

Attorney had “discussed what would happen if [the names of 

the individual City employees] were not provided,” and they

“concluded the only alternative was for [the Winegars] to amend 

[their] claim.” Mr. Winegar later purported to “amend [his] 

claim to include not only [the City] but all the unidentified 

employees who participated in any aspect of the work done at 

[the Winegars’] property.” However, when the City Attorney 

was asked in his deposition whether he “told Mr. Winegar to go 

ahead and file an amended claim or that [he] would reconsider 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 13 2018 UT App 42

the denial,” the City Attorney replied, “I don’t believe I would 

have done that. Mr. Kunz was handling the claim for us.” He 

also testified that he considered URMMA’s March 20 letter to be 

a denial of the Winegars’ claim. Based on the foregoing, we are 

not convinced that the City Attorney legally could, or did, agree 

to an amended notice of claim.

¶28 But even if the City Attorney did agree to an amended 

notice of claim, there is simply no “specific, written 

representation” from the City that the Winegars had “satisfied 

[the Act’s] requirements,” that the City would not later assert the 

one-year limitations period as a defense, or that the Winegars’ 

purported amended notice of claim somehow restarted the yearto-file period. See Monarrez v. Utah Dep’t of Transp., 2016 UT 10, 

¶ 37, 368 P.3d 846. Indeed, the record demonstrates that upon 

receiving the Winegars’ April 24 letter, URMMA sent the May 10 

letter notifying the Winegars that their April 24 letter would not 

qualify as an amended notice of claim, because it was delivered 

to the wrong department within the City.2 URMMA further 

explained that even if the April 24 letter qualified as an amended 

notice of claim, “we do not believe that there is any significant 

additional information that would cause us to change our 

decision on the City’s liability. We must therefore stand on the 

original denial which was conveyed to you in our letter dated 

March 20, 2006.” Nothing in the May 10 letter can reasonably be 

read to mean that the year-to-file period had been restarted, that 

 

2. The Act requires a notice of claim to be “directed and 

delivered” to the office of “the city or town clerk, when the claim 

is against an incorporated city or town.” Utah Code Ann. § 63G7-401(3)(b)(ii)(A) (LexisNexis 2016). The Winegars sent their 

purported amended notice of claim, i.e., the April 24 letter, to the 

City Attorney, and we therefore agree with the district court that 

the April 24 letter was not an amended notice of claim as it “was 

not properly served on the city clerk as required.” See id.
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 14 2018 UT App 42

the Winegars had satisfied the Act’s requirements, or that the 

City would not later assert a limitations defense. See id. 

Accordingly, we conclude that the Winegars’ estoppel claim on 

this point fails.

¶29 In a separate but related argument, the Winegars contend 

that their complaint against Child and Riding “should not have 

been dismissed as the notice of claim and amended notice of 

claim were sufficient to include them and maintain the action 

against them.” We are not persuaded.

¶30 The Winegars first identified Child and Riding in their 

May 2015 amended complaint (filed after Winegar I) and alleged, 

for the first time, that Child and Riding had acted outside the 

scope of their employment and violated state and federal law. 

The Winegars asserted that Defendants “knew or should have 

known that altering or excavating in a streambed, stream bank 

or waterway requires permission from the U.S. Army Corp[s] of 

Engineers or the State Department of Water Rights, which they 

failed to obtain.” The Winegars also sought punitive and treble 

damages from Child and Riding for willful misconduct and 

injuries to trees.

¶31 The district court determined that the Winegars failed to 

provide sufficient information in their notice of claim that they 

would be suing Child and Riding (“[o]r any other John or Jane 

Does”) individually “for acting outside the scope of their 

employment or by violating state or federal statutes.” As the 

court correctly observed, the notice of claim “makes no mention 

of any alleged misconduct of any individual city employee and 

contains no reference to any possible violation of a state or 

federal statute.” The court also noted that, in their amended 

complaint, the Winegars “now seek to impose liability on Child 

and Riding for failing to obtain a permit from either the U.S. 

Army Corp[s] of Engineers . . . or the State Department of Water 

[R]ights before cutting trees or altering the streambed.” 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 15 2018 UT App 42

Observing that the Winegars’ claims against Child and Riding 

were not stated in the notice of claim filed in January 2006, and 

that these were “new claims against new defendants and not 

merely an amplification or expansion of existing claims,” the 

district court determined that the claims against Child and 

Riding individually must be dismissed. See Yearsley v. Jensen, 798 

P.2d 1127, 1129 (Utah 1990) (providing that “[t]here must be 

enough specificity in the notice [of claim] to inform as to the 

nature of the claim so that the defendant can appraise its 

potential liability” and rejecting an amended complaint that 

“presented a new claim charging new and different misconduct 

from the claim made in the notice”). We agree.

¶32 Although the Winegars assert that “the original notice of 

claim describes the conduct, even though the Winegars could 

not yet state names or specific detail due to the City’s 

withholding that information,” as previously discussed, supra

¶ 25, the Winegars have not pointed to any evidence 

demonstrating that they sought Child’s and Riding’s names (or 

that the City withheld any information) before they filed their 

notice of claim in January 2006. Nothing in the Winegars’ notice 

of claim would have generally alerted the City that the Winegars 

were asserting claims against any individual City employees or, 

more specifically, that the Winegars were claiming individual 

employees had acted outside the scope of their employment or 

violated state and federal law. Accordingly, we affirm the 

district court’s dismissal of the Winegars’ claims against Child 

and Riding individually.

C. Incorrect Notice-of-Claim Form

¶33 The Winegars next assert that the City’s notice-of-claim 

form incorrectly informed them that the deemed-denial period 

was 90 days rather than the statutory 60 days and that “[a] 

governmental entity should not be able to misinform potential 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 16 2018 UT App 42

claimants of certain time limits and then later use this 

misunderstanding to ask the court to dismiss the case.”

¶34 The Act provides that “[w]ithin 60 days of the filing of a 

notice of claim, the governmental entity or its insurance carrier 

shall inform the claimant in writing that the claim has either 

been approved or denied.” Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-403(1)(a)

(LexisNexis 2016). If a claimant receives no response to the 

notice of claim from the governmental entity or its insurance 

carrier after 60 days, the claim is deemed denied. Id. § 63G-7-

403(1)(b). After a claim is denied or deemed denied, a claimant

has one year in which to file a complaint in district court. Id. 

§ 63G-7-403(2).

¶35 When the Winegars filed their notice of claim on January 

27, 2006, the City’s notice-of-claim form incorrectly stated: 

“UNDER STATE LAW, THE CITY HAS 90 DAYS IN WHICH 

TO RESPOND TO A CLAIM. IF THE CITY DOES NOT 

RESPOND WITHIN 90 DAYS, THE CLAIM IS DEEMED 

DENIED.”3 The Winegars assert that, based on the City’s noticeof-claim form, they “worked under the assumption [that] they 

had 90 days”—until April 28, 2006—“before the claim would be 

deemed denied if the City did not respond” and that they had to 

“file suit within a year of that date.”4 This argument depends 

upon a determination that the Winegars’ claim was not denied 

before April 28, 2006; i.e., that the March 20, 2006 letter did not 

amount to a denial of the Winegars’ claim.

 

3. The City’s notice-of-claim form appears to have since been 

updated to include the correct 60-day denial period. See 

Springville City, Notice of Claim Form, available at https://

perma.cc/ZZM7-JETT.

4. The Winegars filed suit on April 24, 2007.
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 17 2018 UT App 42

¶36 The district court determined that the Winegars’ claim 

was denied on March 20, 2006, because the March 20 letter “was 

sufficiently clear” and “could only be construed as a denial of 

claim.”5 We agree. The March 20 letter stated:

Our investigation into the claim you have made 

against Springville City for damage to your 

landscaping and property . . . is now complete.

Our investigation indicates that Springville City 

would not be held legally liable for any damages 

you may have sustained. The City has an easement 

on the property which allows [it] to enter the creek 

bed. [It] also ha[s] authority to take measures to 

clean out and maintain the creek bed to prevent 

flooding that might damage other property 

downstream.

Because the City would not be held liable, we must 

respectfully decline to make any voluntary 

payments on this claim.

Although the March 20 letter did not specifically use the words

“deny” or “denied,” see infra ¶ 41, it referred to the Winegars’ 

claim against the City, stated that the City “would not be held 

liable” for their alleged damages, and declined to make any 

voluntary payments. When read as a whole, we conclude that 

 

5. As previously discussed, on remand from Winegar I, the 

parties conducted discovery and took depositions. The City 

Attorney testified in his deposition that “Lyle Kunz was a claims 

adjuster for URMMA, who was [the City’s] insurer at the time,” 

and the district court concluded that it “now [had] sufficient 

undisputed evidence before it to determine that . . . URMMA 

was the insurer of [the City]” in March 2006 “and the other 

relevant time periods for this case.”
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 18 2018 UT App 42

the only reasonable interpretation of the March 20 letter is as a 

denial of the Winegars’ claim. Certainly, nothing in the March 20 

letter can be read as approving the Winegars’ claim.

¶37 In any event, even if we were to conclude that the March 

20 letter was ambiguous regarding the status of the Winegars’ 

claim, URMMA’s April 20 letter made it clear that the claim had 

been denied on March 20. The April 20 letter specifically stated, 

“Your claim was denied on March 20, 2006,” and informed the 

Winegars that URMMA would not continue negotiations with 

them. Accordingly, we agree with the district court that “[i]f 

there were any doubts about the status of the Winegars’ claim 

against the City, [the April 20] letter eliminated any such 

doubts.” We also agree with the district court that, “[e]ven if the 

Winegars had used this later date (April 20, 2006) as the date 

when the City made its intentions clear,” the Winegars’ April 24, 

2007 complaint “was still filed four days too late.”

¶38 “[A] denial—whether by operation of law or by written 

notice—can occur only once . . . . Once a claim has been denied 

by one mechanism, it cannot be denied again by the other.” 

Monarrez v. Utah Dep’t of Transp., 2016 UT 10, ¶ 16, 368 P.3d 846. 

Here, we conclude that the City denied the Winegars’ claim by 

written notice on March 20, 2006, and thus, there was no deemed 

denial in this case. See id. (“[A] deemed denial occurs only if the 

government fails to issue a written denial . . . .”). Consequently, 

the fact that the City’s notice-of-claim form incorrectly 

“informed [the Winegars] that the deemed denied period was 90

days rather than 60 days,” while unfortunate, is ultimately 

immaterial. Given the City’s March 20 written denial, the 

Winegars could not reasonably rely on the 90-day deemeddenial period listed on the City’s notice-of-claim form in filing 

their lawsuit. The Winegars were required to file their complaint 

by March 20, 2007, and because they filed their complaint on 

April 24, 2007, their suit was untimely. Based on the foregoing, 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 19 2018 UT App 42

we reject the Winegars’ argument that the City should be 

estopped from asserting the one-year limitations defense.

II. Strict Compliance

¶39 The Winegars next contend that the district court “erred 

in not requiring [the City] to ‘strictly comply’ with [the Act] 

rather than accepting [its] ‘substantial compliance’ thus allowing 

[the City] to introduce further confusion to claimants attempting 

to comply with [the Act].”

¶40 The Winegars observe that the Act mandates that 

“[w]ithin 60 days of the filing of a notice of claim, the 

governmental entity or its insurance carrier shall inform the 

claimant in writing that the claim has either been approved or 

denied.” Utah Code Ann. § 63G-7-403(1)(a) (LexisNexis 2016).

According to the Winegars, the City did not strictly comply with 

this section of the Act in two ways.

¶41 First, the Winegars assert that the Act requires “a city (or 

its insurer) specifically state a claim is ‘denied’” and that in the 

March 20 letter, “URMMA used the vague and non-statutory 

language that it will not ‘. . . make any voluntary payments.’” 

We are not persuaded. The Winegars fail to cite any authority to 

support their assertion that the Act requires the use of specific 

words of denial, see Utah R. App. P. 24(a)(8), and our review of 

the Act does not reveal any such requirement. Moreover, as 

previously discussed, the March 20, 2006 letter can be reasonably 

construed only as a denial of the Winegars’ claim, and any 

possible ambiguity in the March 20 letter was resolved by the 

April 20 letter confirming that their claim had been denied on 

March 20.

¶42 Second, the Winegars assert that the City failed to strictly 

comply with the Act because “[a]n insurer (or City) has the 

obligation to use proper statutory language and to identify itself 

as the insurer” and “the identity of URMMA was only a guess 
Winegar v. Springville City

20160364-CA 20 2018 UT App 42

when the letter was written.” As previously discussed, on 

remand from Winegar I, the City conclusively established that 

URMMA was its insurer during March 2006 (and all other 

relevant time periods). Mr. Winegar also acknowledged during 

his deposition that he had assumed Lyle Kunz was an insurance 

adjustor and that “[Kunz] had some involvement in the 

process.” Although it is unfortunate that URMMA’s status as the 

City’s insurer was not readily discernible from the March 20 

letter, the Winegars have not cited any authority demonstrating 

that the Act requires a governmental entity’s insurance carrier to 

identify itself as such when approving or denying a claim, see id., 

and again, our review of the Act reveals no such requirement.

CONCLUSION

¶43 We conclude that estoppel is not warranted under the 

circumstances of this case. We further conclude that the Act does 

not require strict compliance from the City in the manner that 

the Winegars suggest. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s 

grant of summary judgment in favor of Defendants.