Opinion ID: 4543427
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Court of Appeals Properly Addressed

Text: the Almost Automatically Case Law ¶34 According to the GAL, the vitality of the almost automatically cases was not properly before the court of appeals because the parties made only peripheral mention of that authority to the juvenile court. Moreover, claims the GAL, the juvenile court did not rely on the almost automatically cases to reach its decision. This prompts the GAL to contend that the court of appeals had no business picking fights with case law that was neither raised in the juvenile court proceedings nor the basis of the juvenile court’s decision. 5 ¶35 In a gambit only someone on appellate Twitter could love, Father counters the GAL’s preservation argument with a claim that the preservation question is outside the scope of our grant of certiorari. Father notes that Utah Rule of Appellate Procedure 49 provides that on certiorari “[o]nly the questions set forth in the petition or fairly included therein will be considered by the Supreme Court.” UTAH R. APP. P. 49(a)(4). And Father uses that rule to argue that preservation is not a question fairly included within our grant of certiorari. ¶36 We have been less than impressed with arguments like those Father advances here. We have observed that on certiorari, “we review for correctness the decision of the court of appeals.” _____________________________________________________________ 5 Father faults the GAL for not objecting when the court of appeals asked for supplemental briefing on the almost automatically case law. Because we ultimately reject the GAL’s argument, we need not address Father’s concern that the GAL waived it. 10 Cite as: 2020 UT 36 Opinion of the Court Pulham v. Kirsling, 2019 UT 18, ¶ 18, 443 P.3d 1217 (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). “The correctness of the court of appeals’ decision turns, in part, on whether it . . . correctly assessed preservation of the issues before it.” Id. (alteration in original) (citation omitted). The GAL is therefore not prohibited from raising questions of preservation on certiorari. They are fairly included in the question on which we granted review. ¶37 Although properly before us, we dismiss the GAL’s preservation concerns without breaking a sweat. The parties asked the court of appeals to interpret the Act. This required the court of appeals to decide what the Legislature meant when it added the words “strictly necessary” to the Act. In the course of doing that, the court of appeals observed that its case law might be at odds with the statutory mandate. ¶38 The court of appeals realized that the parties had not briefed the relationship between the almost automatically cases and the 2012 amendment to the Act, and it provided the parties an opportunity to address the question through supplemental briefing. After review of that briefing, the court of appeals decided it needed to disavow portions of its case law. The court of appeals acted correctly each step of the way. ¶39 The GAL is correct that “[w]hen a party fails to raise and argue an issue in the trial court, it has failed to preserve the issue, and an appellate court will not typically reach” it. State v. Johnson, 2017 UT 76, ¶ 15, 416 P.3d 443. 6 But even if the fleeting references _____________________________________________________________ 6 The GAL relies on Johnson to argue that “[t]he court of appeals . . . dwell[s] on unpreserved issues going to best interests including the constitutional dimensions of best interests, its burden of proof, its burden of production, and the relevancy of best-interest evidence.” However, in Johnson the appellant appealed his conviction based on two alleged errors. 2017 UT 76, ¶ 3. The court of appeals reversed Johnson’s conviction based on a third error that the appellant had not raised. Id. ¶ 4. We determined that the court of appeals erred in reversing the conviction based on an error that was both unpreserved below and waived on appeal. Id. ¶ 63. Here, the court of appeals addressed the issue Father raised on appeal. Father argued that that juvenile court had misapplied the Act, In Interest of B.T.B., 2018 UT App 157, ¶ 45, and that “the juvenile court erred by determining that termination of his rights was in the Children's best interests or strictly necessary.” Id. ¶ 58. (continued . . .) 11 In re B.T.B and B.Z.B. Opinion of the Court made to the almost automatically language in the juvenile court did not preserve the issue, the court of appeals recognized that its interpretation of the Act would be at loggerheads with its case law. ¶40 When interpreting a statute, a court is not bound to rely only on information the parties provide. Stated differently, the parties cannot force a court into a strained interpretation of a statute by the arguments they advance. A court’s duty is to get the law right and parties cannot push us off that path. ¶41 To take an extreme example, the parties could not, by eschewing arguments based upon a statute’s text, prevent the court from basing its interpretation on the statute’s plain language. See State v. Hatfield, 2020 UT 1, ¶ 16, 462 P.3d 330 (describing that we start with a statute’s plain language to understand its meaning). Similarly, a party cannot prevent the court from employing certain canons of construction by failing to argue them. See State v. Garcia, 2017 UT 53, ¶ 52, 424 P.3d 171 (holding that an appellate court was not deprived of the ability to employ a canon of interpretation because the party had not raised that canon in its briefing). ¶42 Here, in interpreting the Act, the court of appeals looked at how the language the Legislature added to the statute changed the law. In Interest of B.T.B., 2018 UT App 157, ¶¶ 19–20. And it questioned whether some of its case law could coexist with the amended Act. Id. ¶¶ 20–22. After comparing the almost automatically cases with the statutory language, the court of appeals determined that those cases were inconsistent with the Act. See id. ¶ 44. To remedy that, the court of appeals disavowed those cases to the extent they conflicted with the statute. Id. This is what we want our courts to do. We therefore disagree with the GAL that the court of appeals was barred from addressing the almost automatically line of cases. 7 The court of appeals opinion discusses just that—whether the juvenile court interpreted and applied the new statutory language correctly. Thus, unlike in Johnson, here the court of appeals was answering a preserved question the parties advanced. 7 The GAL also asserts that it was not necessary to disavow these cases for two reasons. First, the almost automatically language was an observation, not a rule. And second, none of the disavowed cases had relied on the almost automatically reasoning to reach a decision. (continued . . .) 12 Cite as: 2020 UT 36 Opinion of the Court ¶43 Contrary to the GAL’s criticisms, the court of appeals should be lauded for its careful analysis and its commitment to cleaning up what could have been problematic case law had it been permitted to linger in the jurisprudence.