Opinion ID: 2543380
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: the legal sufficiency of the summary-process record to support the nisi prius judgment

Text: ¶ 18 Summary process is a procedural pretrial device for the prompt and efficient disposition of an action sans forensic combat. It is applied where there is no dispute as to the material facts or as to any inferences that may be drawn from undisputed facts, and the law favors the movant's claim or liability-defeating defense. [40] It is not the purpose of summary process to substitute a trial by affidavit for one by jury, but rather to afford a method of summarily terminating a case (or eliminating from trial some of its issues on the merits of a claim or defense) where only questions of law remain. [41] Summary relief issues stand before us for de novo review. This court's scrutiny of the entire record is accomplished independently and without deference to the trial court's resolution. [42] ¶ 19 Dr. Lashley's claimed substandard professional performance rests on her use of allegedly improper evaluative techniques in the therapy sessions with the father's two minor daughters. To prevail as the summary-judgment movant, Dr. Lashley had the initial burden of showing (by proffered evidentiary material) want of at least one material element in Myers' claim. [43] She clearly met this burden by demonstrating that her report of sexual abuse and all the post-reporting harm to Myers stood shielded from liability by a legislatively conferred qualified reporting privilege. ¶ 20 One need not pause to ponder even for a brief moment before rejecting out-of-hand the delusive suggestion that the plaintiffs are somehow legally shortchanged by today's affirmance. Dr. Lashley's absolute defense could not be defeated by mere silence. There can be no doubt that the plaintiffs had received below the full measure of that summary process which is their constitutional due. Equally unassailable stands this pronouncement's analysis of the privilege statute's outer reach in its application to the defendant's liability-defeating defense. Once the plaintiffs were put on notice of Dr. Lashley's reliance on privilege, the onus [44] shifted to them to overcome its effect. It called upon them to pierce, avoid or overcome that privilege (either or all) by tendering acceptable evidentiary materials which would show the psychologist's conduct in contest was outside the range of her statutory protection [45] or their claim to be unaffected by her immunity from liability. Plaintiffs could have pierced the privilege by showing Dr. Lashley's submission in bad faith [46] of a flawed child-abuse report to the authorities. They had the same opportunity to avoid the legal incidence of the invoked privilege by showing that their tort claim pressed for recovery of harm entirely disconnected from the consequences of mandatory reporting. A party, who, when confronted in summary process by evidentiary material demonstrative of its adversary's absolute statutory defense against the pressed claim, does not act to pierce, avoid or overcome the complete defense by appropriate probative devices, becomes indeed the architect of its own claim's demise. [47]