Opinion ID: 6350437
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Cove Failed to Preserve the Issue of Whether

Text: Draper City Code Section 17-2-040 Conflicts with State Law ¶24 The Cove first argues that it preserved the issue it wants to press on appeal because, contrary to the Service District’s argument, the Cove raised the conflict between Draper City Code section 17-1- 040 and state law in the district court. As evidence of this, the Cove points to several sentences in its complaint that reference Draper City Code. The Cove did not, however, even mention these paragraphs of its complaint in the opposition to the motion to dismiss, let alone build an argument around them. The Cove nevertheless argues that the reference in the complaint was sufficient to preserve the issue for appeal.4 That is not how preservation works. ¶25 To preserve an issue, a party must bring the issue to the district court in a manner that, at a minimum, alerts the district court that it is being asked to decide the issue. The Cove points to nothing in the record, and our own review reveals nothing, that suggests the district court would have understood that the Cove believed that Draper City Code did not control because it conflicts with state law. That is simply nowhere to be found in the Cove’s opposition to the motion to dismiss. The suggestion that a reference to Draper City Code in the complaint somehow raised the issue of state law preemption to defeat a motion to dismiss does not hold water. ¶26 The Cove next argues that even if that issue is unpreserved, we should still address it. It claims that even if the Cove did not otherwise satisfy the preservation rule, the district court took up the question, thereby freeing the Cove from the need to preserve the issue. The Cove relies on our decision in Fort Pierce for support. But this case presents a much different situation than Fort Pierce. ¶27 In Fort Pierce, we said that “the district court’s decision to take up [a] question . . . conclusively overcame any objection that the issue was not preserved for appeal.” Fort Pierce Indus. Park Phases II, III & IV Owners Ass’n v. Shakespeare, 2016 UT 28, ¶ 13, 379 P.3d 1218. _____________________________________________________________ 4We note that the Cove’s counsel on appeal did not represent the Cove in the district court. 8 Cite as: 2022 UT 23 Opinion of the Court In that case, we considered whether a party had properly preserved the question of whether restrictive covenants were disfavored. Id. ¶ 12. Neither party had argued that restrictive covenants were disfavored. But that did not stop the district court from concluding that that “restrictive covenants . . . are disfavored and should be ‘strictly construed in favor of the free and unrestricted use of property.’” Id. ¶ 9. Because the court had explicitly considered the specific issue of whether restrictive covenants were disfavored, we concluded that considering that same question on appeal would not compromise the court’s interest in promoting judicial economy nor would it be unfair. Id. ¶ 13. ¶28 The Cove tries to deploy Fort Pierce’s logic to this matter. It argues that because the district court decided that Draper City Code prohibits the Service District from providing services to the Cove’s residents, the issue regarding the possible preemptive effect of state law has been preserved. The problem with the Cove’s argument should be obvious. In Fort Pierce, the district court ruled on the precise issue that the appellant wanted to assert on appeal. Here, no party raised the issue the Cove wants to press, and the district court did not rule on it. It simply ruled on the ultimate issue before it. Defining the issue to be preserved at the level of generality that the Cove does here would all but erase the preservation requirement. ¶29 The preservation rule’s rationale motivates this decision. To promote fairness and conserve judicial resources, a party must raise the issue in a manner that notifies the district court that it is being asked to rule on the issue and allows the opposing party to address it. If a party fails to present an issue to the district court, but the district court acts as if it had by sua sponte analyzing and ruling on that issue, we promote neither fairness nor judicial economy by refusing to allow a party to challenge the court’s decision on appeal. But, for this circumstance to occur, the district court actually needs to address the issue the party wants to raise on appeal. That did not happen here. B. The Cove Did Not Preserve the Issue of Whether the Service District Is a Party in Interest to the Development Agreement ¶30 The Cove next argues that it should be entitled to raise the issue that the Service District has no interest in the Development Agreement even if it did not raise that issue below. ¶31 The Cove claims that it should be allowed to raise its argument because the district court concluded that the Service District could enforce the Development Agreement. However, the lower court never made such a determination. At most, the district 9 THE COVE AT LITTLE VALLEY v. TRAVERSE RIDGE SPECIAL SERVICE DISTRICT Opinion of the Court court tangentially referenced the Development Agreement at the hearing on the motion to dismiss. But it never said that the Service District could enforce the Development Agreement against the Cove. ¶32 The Cove asserts that even if the issue was not preserved, it has a work-around. The Cove contends that the Service District does not have standing to enforce the Development Agreement. The Cove notes our case law that standing can be asserted at any time and argues that it can therefore raise this issue even if it did not give the district court a swing at it. There are several problems with the Cove’s analysis. ¶33 First, the Cove misunderstands the type of standing that need not be preserved and can be raised at any time. Only standing which calls into question a court’s subject matter jurisdiction can be raised at any point in the litigation. This is because the court has a duty to ensure that it has subject matter jurisdiction over the cases in front of it. See, e.g., Matter of Adoption of B.B., 2017 UT 59, ¶ 102, 417 P.3d 1. If a court determines that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction, it “retains only the authority to dismiss the action.” Nevares v. Adoptive Couple, 2016 UT 39, ¶ 22, 384 P.3d 213 (citation omitted). ¶34 The Cove wants to challenge the Service District’s ability to use the Development Agreement to defend itself against claims the Cove brought against it. And we sometimes speak of a party’s ability to enforce a contract as “standing” to enforce an agreement. See, e.g., Orlando Millenia, LC v. United Title Servs. of Utah, Inc., 2015 UT 55, ¶ 37, 355 P.3d 965 (“In contract law, a third party has standing to sue if it is an intended, and not merely an incidental, beneficiary.” (emphasis omitted)); Harper v. Great Salt Lake Council, Inc., 1999 UT 34, ¶ 20, 976 P.2d 1213 (“Harper has no standing to object to BSA and Mt. Jordan’s modification of a term of the First Refusal Agreement because he had no cognizable interest in that agreement.”); see also Hillcrest Inv. v. Sandy City, 2010 UT App 201, ¶ 20, 238 P.3d 1067 (“[E]ven if Hillcrest had standing to enforce the Contract generally, Hillcrest was not entitled to the relief it had requested . . . .”). But, even if we were to decide that the Service District could not enforce the Development Agreement, we would not lose subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the claims the Cove brought against the Service District. ¶35 Because the “standing” issue the Cove seeks to advance on appeal does not implicate the species of standing that would deprive this court of subject matter jurisdiction, the Cove needed to raise it 10 Cite as: 2022 UT 23 Opinion of the Court below to preserve it. The Cove never argued that the Service District could not rely on the Development Agreement, and that issue is therefore not preserved for appeal. C. There Are Serious Questions About When Plain Error Can Be Asserted in Civil Cases. In Any Event, the District Court Did Not Plainly Err ¶36 The Cove last argues that we ought to consider its unpreserved issues because the district court committed plain error when it dismissed the first cause of action. Before we turn to the merits of the Cove’s contention, we pause to acknowledge a question about a party’s ability to assert plain error in a civil matter that the court of appeals expertly analyzed in Kelly v. Timber Lakes Prop. Owners Ass’n, 2022 UT App 23, 507 P.3d 357. ¶37 The court of appeals considered if and when the plain error doctrine should be applied in a civil case. To help answer this question, the court of appeals traced the plain error doctrine’s evolution. Id. ¶¶ 35–44. The court of appeals correctly noted that we first applied the plain error doctrine in a capital case, State v. Stenback, 2 P.2d 1050 (Utah 1931). Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 35. The Stenback court reasoned that in capital cases, the court “may and should sua sponte consider manifest and prejudicial errors which are neither assigned nor argued.” 2 P.2d at 1056. It concluded that “[a]n error which is so manifest and so calculated to be prejudicial to the rights of the defendant as was the refusal of the court to permit him to testify as to whether he did or did not intend to kill the deceased may not justly be brushed aside.” Id. at 1057. ¶38 A few years later, this court expanded the doctrine to include “cases of grave and serious charged offenses[,] . . . convictions of long terms of imprisonment, [and] cases involving the life and liberty of the citizen.” State v. Cobo, 60 P.2d 952, 958 (Utah 1936), criticized by State v. Mitchell, 278 P.2d 618 (Utah 1955). In such cases, we claimed for ourselves the power to intervene “when palpable error is made to appear on the face of the record and to the manifest prejudice of the accused” even when the issue has not been preserved. Id. ¶39 Although the doctrine was initially cabined to serious crimes and significant punishments, it eventually expanded to include all criminal offenses. See, e.g., State v. Waid, 67 P.2d 647, 652 (Utah 1937) (holding that even a conviction of “simple assault” “entails the loss of friends and the respect of fellows,” and therefore the court “should notice the error”). And in the past seventy-plus years, we have applied the plain error doctrine a number of times to a wide 11 THE COVE AT LITTLE VALLEY v. TRAVERSE RIDGE SPECIAL SERVICE DISTRICT Opinion of the Court variety of criminal offenses. See, e.g., State v. Verde, 770 P.2d 116, 117, 122–23 (Utah 1989) (applying the plain error doctrine to the admission of prejudicial evidence in a case involving the sale of a child); State v. Dunn, 850 P.2d 1201, 1208–09 (Utah 1993), (applying the plain error doctrine to jury instructions in a manslaughter and kidnapping case), abrogated on other grounds by State v. Silva, 2019 UT 36, 456 P.3d 718; State v. Ross, 2007 UT 89, ¶¶ 33, 40, 53, 174 P.3d 628, (assessing whether plain error existed when a court failed to merge an aggravated murder charge with an attempted aggravated murder charge, impaneled an anonymous jury, and allowed potentially prejudicial remarks in the prosecution’s closing statement), abrogated by State v. Hummel, 2017 UT 19, 393 P.3d 314; State v. Marquina, 2020 UT 66, ¶¶ 1, 30–33, 478 P.3d 37 (analyzing whether a juror sleeping during court proceedings constituted plain error in an aggravated robbery case). Plain error is now firmly entrenched in our criminal law jurisprudence. ¶40 In contrast to our willingness to employ plain error in criminal cases, we have questioned whether it should apply in the civil context. See In re J.A.L., 2022 UT 12, ¶ 12 n.3, 506 P.3d 606 (“[T]his court has not decided whether plain error applies in civil cases.”); see also Utah Stream Access Coal. v. Orange St. Dev., 2017 UT 82, ¶ 14 n.2, 416 P.3d 553 (“[T]here is an ongoing debate about the propriety of civil plain error review”). There is good reason to question whether a party to a civil case should be able to address an unpreserved error on appeal, even if it qualifies as obvious. As the court of appeals explained, “the economic and property interests that are typically the subject of civil cases are not as fundamental as the liberty interests at stake in criminal cases.” Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 42. Moreover, the availability of malpractice remedies against attorneys who miss obvious arguments might be a fairer fix than allowing a party to raise an unpreserved error on appeal and drag an opposing party, who may bear no responsibility for the error, through the cost of an appeal and renewed district court proceedings.5 _____________________________________________________________ 5 That having been said, care must be taken to not paint with too broad a brush. There may be civil cases where the interests implicated —parental termination cases, for example – present a compelling argument for plain error review. See Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 42 n.10. In these cases, a malpractice action and the potential for (continued . . .) 12 Cite as: 2022 UT 23 Opinion of the Court ¶41 Despite these apparent misgivings, we, and the court of appeals, have nevertheless applied plain error in some civil cases. See, e.g., Utah Stream Access Coal., 2017 UT 82, ¶ 14; Heslop v. Bank of Utah, 839 P.2d 828, 839–40 (Utah 1992); Classic Cabinets, Inc. v. All Am. Life Ins. Co., 1999 UT App 88, ¶ 17, 978 P.2d 465; Larsen v. Johnson, 958 P.2d 953, 956 (Utah Ct. App. 1998); Davis v. Grand Cnty. Serv. Area, 905 P.2d 888, 892–94 (Utah Ct. App. 1995), abrogated on other grounds by Gillett v. Price, 2006 UT 24, 135 P.3d 861. But, as the court of appeals observed, it appears to have been applied in cases in which the parties did not question the validity of the doctrine’s application in the civil context. Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 40. ¶42 Although we have expressed skepticism about plain error review of unpreserved issues in civil cases, elements of the plain error doctrine have been codified into the rules that apply in civil cases. See Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 37. Utah Rule of Evidence 103 allows a court to “take notice of a plain error [within an evidentiary holding] affecting a substantial right, even if the claim of error was not properly preserved.” UTAH R. EVID. 103(e). And Utah Rule of Civil Procedure 51 instructs that jury instructions can be deemed error even without a voiced objection if the instruction would lead to “a manifest injustice.” UTAH R. CIV. P. 51(f). ¶43 In Kelly, the court of appeals ultimately concluded that “unless expressly authorized by rule, the plain error exception to our preservation rule does not properly extend to ordinary civil appeals.” Kelly, 2022 UT App 23, ¶ 41 (citations omitted). We have not been asked to review that conclusion. As we noted above, there may be categories of civil cases where the interests at stake and the inadequacy of money damages militate in favor of plain error review. ¶44 The parties in this case do not address the viability of the plain error exception in civil cases. This places us in a disadvantageous position to make broad pronouncements about the doctrine. This means that we once again voice our skepticism about whether the plain error exception to our preservation rule should be invoked in many civil cases unless expressly authorized by rule. And we leave the broader question for a case in which it is briefed and before us. This also means that we once again find ourselves saying economic damages will not be an adequate remedy for a plain error that results in a loss of parental rights. 13 THE COVE AT LITTLE VALLEY v. TRAVERSE RIDGE SPECIAL SERVICE DISTRICT Opinion of the Court that even if plain error is a thing in civil cases like this one, the specific complained-of error fails to meet the definition of plain. ¶45 The Cove argues that the lower court’s decision is “contrary to the established legal authority [the Cove] cites regarding a conflict between a city ordinance and a state statute.” It further argues that this error should have been obvious to the trial court because the cases the Cove cites in its briefing to us are “‘clear’ and were ‘plainly settled’ at the time of the district court’s decision in September 2020.” Stated differently, the Cove contends that the district court plainly erred because it should have known, without any party bringing the issue to its attention, that the Utah Special Service District preempted a provision of Draper City Code. ¶46 “For an error to be obvious to the trial court, the party arguing for the exception to preservation must show that the law governing the error was clear or plainly settled at the time the alleged error was made.” Johnson, 2017 UT 76, ¶ 21 (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). ¶47 The Cove cites case law which demonstrates that local ordinances cannot conflict with state law. See S. Salt Lake City v. Maese, 2019 UT 58, ¶ 75, 450 P.3d 1092 (“City ordinances can criminalize the same conduct as a state statute, so long as the ordinances do not conflict with a state statute.”); Hansen v. Eyre, 2005 UT 29, ¶ 15, 116 P.3d 290 (“It is well established that, where a city ordinance is in conflict with a state statute, the ordinance is invalid at its inception.”). That is true as far as it goes. What the Cove has not demonstrated is that it would have been plain error for the district court to fail to realize that Draper City Code conflicts with the Utah Special Service Act. Indeed, the Cove has failed to meet its burden of even demonstrating the correctness of the legal conclusion embedded in that argument. ¶48 The Cove did not preserve the issues it wants to raise on appeal to argue that the district court erred when it dismissed the first cause of action. No exception to the preservation rule exists that would allow the Cove to nevertheless assert them. Without a viable challenge to the district court’s decision to dismiss the first cause of action, we affirm the district court’s grant of the motion to dismiss that claim. 14 Cite as: 2022 UT 23 Opinion of the Court