Opinion ID: 2567477
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: due cause may permit revision and late filing of the kaiser steel objection and late filing of the objection to the first addendum

Text: ¶33 The district court also turned away Penta Creeks' application to be granted, pursuant to Utah Code section 73-4-10, retroactive extensions of time to file both the Kaiser Steel objection with a proper verification and its objection to the First Addendum. ¶34 By enacting section 73-4-10, the legislature empowered the district court to spare a water claimant who would otherwise be caught up in the complex procedural gears of a general adjudication lawsuit. The court's authority to grant an extension of the time for filing pleadings is limited by the requirement that the claimant demonstrate due cause. Utah Code Ann. § 73-4-10 (1989). We have recently provided operational guidance to district courts called upon to apply the due cause standard of section 73-4-10. See Green River Canal Co. v. Olds, 2004 UT 106, ¶ 43, 110 P.3d 666. Our search for a workable due cause standard was guided by the need to balance the objective of general adjudication actions to bring certainty to the allocation of our state's water resources with fairness in the administration of rules created to produce that certainty and finality. Id. ¶ 41. ¶35 In Green River, we discovered in rule 4(e) of our Rules of Appellate Procedure, the rule governing extensions of time to file appeals, a workable standard that could be transferred to the task before us. Rule 4(e) grants a court discretion to extend the time for filing a notice of appeal when a late filing is the product of excusable neglect or when good cause is present. Green River, 2004 UT 106, ¶ 43. We interpreted good cause to be a special circumstance that was beyond the party's control. Id. ¶36 Although both parties relied on Green River's due cause standard in their briefs to the district court, the district court failed to apply Green River's test for due cause to the Kaiser Steel objection or the objection to the First Addendum, nor did the district court explain how it came to conclude that Penta Creeks' circumstances did not qualify as due cause. We would typically cede a substantial measure of deference to a district court's ruling on an application for relief under section 73-4-10. This is because the assessment of whether due cause exists is one that is bound up in the facts of a particular case. We are compelled to withhold that deference here because the district court failed to state what standard it used for determining due cause and articulated no analysis of which facts it used to support its finding that there was no due cause. Moreover, it is clear to us that unchallenged facts in the record suggest that Penta Creeks may well merit section 73-4-10 relief. ¶37 Among these facts is the apparent lax adherence of claimants to section 73-4-11's verification requirement. Although section 73-4-11 clearly states that verification of objections is required, the portion of the general adjudication record provided to this court demonstrates that most claimants did not swear to the accuracy of their objections. In 1973, the year the Kaiser Steel objection was filed, it may well have been the practice of water rights claimants and water rights attorneys to take a relaxed approach to the verification requirement, much like it appears to currently be the practice of the State Engineer to take a dismissive view of the section 73-4-3 requirement that the clerk of the court maintain the list of claimants in the general adjudication. Additionally, the record indicates that when the State Engineer began responding to objections in 2000, he did not consistently seek to enforce the verification requirement. ¶38 Standing out most prominently in the record is the fact that the Office of the Attorney General, serving in its capacity as counsel for the State Engineer, obtained and used the correct name and address of Penta Creeks' attorney when it filed an answer to the Kaiser Steel objection on the State Engineer's behalf. The extent of the State Engineer's account of his attorney's acquisition of the information is contained in his statement in his brief that the Attorney General's Office evidently discovered and used the address of Penta Creeks' registered agent. ¶39 In the State Engineer's view, there was no need to elaborate on the circumstances under which his attorney came upon accurate notification information for Penta Creeks because the attorney's knowledge was irrelevant to the issue of proper notice. The State Engineer's position, one that persuaded the district court, was that for the purpose of satisfying his statutory duty to provide notice to water claimants, his field of vision need not stray beyond the names and addresses in his records. ¶40 Whatever one might think about the merits of the State Engineer's argument that he was under no obligation to retrieve from his attorneys the address used to mail the Answer, it is a legal argument that has little, if anything at all, to do with the implications of Penta Creeks' receipt of the Answer on due cause. The State Engineer, together with the district court, merged the two issues. In their view, once the State Engineer's mailing of the First Addendum to the incorrect address was found to be lawful, Penta Creeks' claim to due cause evaporated. Penta Creeks merely joined the list of hundreds of claimants who failed to provide updated addresses to the State Engineer. The names and addresses of these claimants appear in an attachment to the State Engineer's Affidavit of Undeliverable Proposed Determination's First Addendum. The employee of the State Engineer's Office who signed the affidavit stated that she sent copies of the First Addendum to each claimant to their last known address on file with the State Engineer's office. Of course, this statement serves as further confirmation that the mailing addresses used by the State Engineer were drawn from an unauthorized list, but more notably, it is very likely that Penta Creeks is unique among these claimants in having received documents from attorneys for the State Engineer mailed to an accurate, working address. This circumstance renders highly suspect the State Engineer's contention that Penta Creeks was duty bound to formally update its address even though the Answer had been properly addressed to and received by Penta Creeks' attorney. ¶41 There are few among us who, having received official correspondence from the attorney for a state agency, would harbor a belief that the agency did not have a secure grasp on our address and would not be capable of using that address in the future. Even if before the official correspondence arrived one came to suspect that the agency did not have a current address on file, the receipt of the correspondence would almost certainly put those fears to rest. A person who, despite having received official correspondence from a state agency, felt compelled to confirm that the address actually used by the agency was the same address found on the roster of addresses used by the agency for its official mailings would at the least be considered, using the most generous of diagnoses, excessively prudent. ¶42 The assessment of whether Penta Creeks' untimely response to the First Addendum should be excused for due cause required the district court to move beyond ascertaining the locus of legal responsibilities to account for how the circumstances influenced the reasonable assumptions and behavior of the parties. On remand, if the district court is called upon to revisit Penta Creeks' applications for relief under section 74-4-10, it must take on this task in the context of applying the Green River standard for due cause.