Opinion ID: 162210
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Motion to strike response brief

Text: On August 22, 2001, Mr. Davis filed a motion to file out of time his response brief to the original appeal. In his motion, he claimed that he had not received our April 30, 2001 order requiring that his brief be filed by May 30, 2001, until August 17, 2001. He attached an affidavit from one of his employees stating that on that date, Mailboxes, Etc. had placed a notice to pick up an oversized envelope in Mr. Davis’s box. The affidavit states that the “envelope” was in fact a stack of mail that had been “misplaced” by Mailboxes, Etc. -10- The affidavit states that Ms. Norris’s “appeal brief along with the Order . . . filed April 30, 2001” was in the stack. We note, however, that the notice states only that there was an envelope too large for the mailbox that Mr. Davis needed to pick up at the counter. The clerk’s practice is to mail single or two-page orders in regular envelopes and not in oversized envelopes, and the clerk did not include Ms. Norris’s brief, which was filed in June 2000 and separately mailed to him by Ms. Norris in May 2000, with that order. It is highly unlikely that (1) Mailboxes, Etc. would have held Ms. Norris’s appeal brief for over a year before it gave him notice to pick it up; or (2) that our April 30, 2001 order was the “item” described in the August 17, 2001 Mailboxes, Etc. notice; or that (3) Mr. Davis would not inquire with this court whether filings of which he was unaware had been made, given Ms. Norris’s notice to him that she had informed this court of the dismissal of the bankruptcy proceedings and that she was filing motions to strike and motions for sanctions. We further note that Mr. Davis never responded that he had not received Ms. Norris’s appeal brief when this court first notified him in July 2000 that we had not received his response brief. We find it curious that Mr. Davis has so much difficulty receiving legal mail and observe that he has not rebutted the affidavit filed by his former employee stating that Mr. Davis regularly instructed his employees not to accept legal mail or service of process. -11- The panel that granted Mr. Davis’s request to file his response brief out of time did not consider Ms. Norris’s previously-filed motion to strike or her request that we disallow a response brief. We grant Ms. Norris’s motion to reconsider our order allowing Mr. Davis to file the response brief out of time. We strike his response brief for failing to comply with our July 31, 2000 order to file a response brief within ten days, for failing to comply with our December 15, 2000 order to submit a status report on the bankruptcy proceedings by February 15, 2001, for failure to comply with our April 30, 2001 order instructing him to file a response brief by May 30, 2001, and as a sanction for having delayed the appeal proceedings for over a year by filing the fraudulent motion to dismiss. We deny Ms. Norris’s motion to file her reply brief out of time as moot. C. Appeal of the order dismissing Ms. Norris’s counterclaims 1. Res judicata. We next turn to the substantive issues in this case. The district court dismissed Ms. Norris’s counterclaims by concluding that she could and should have brought all of her counterclaims in the 1987 Utah state court action. We review the court’s application of res judicata de novo. King v. Union Oil Co. , 117 F.3d 443, 445 (10th Cir. 1997). We look to Utah law to determine the preclusive effect to be given the judgment entered in the state civil-assault action. See Marrese v. Am. Acad. of Orthopaedic Surgeons , 470 U.S. 373, 375 (1985) (stating that a federal court of -12- appeals must refer to state law to determine the preclusive effect of a prior state judgment between parties on the subsequent federal suit); Fox v. Maulding , 112 F.3d 453, 456 (10th Cir. 1997) (same). Under Utah law, [c]laim preclusion applicability . . . requires that the claim, even though not decided in the prior action, could and should have been litigated, but was not raised by any of the parties. This “reflects the expectation that parties who are given the capacity to present their ‘entire controversies’ shall in fact do so.” Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24 comment a (1982). Ringwood v. Foreign Auto Works, Inc. , 786 P.2d 1350, 1357 (Utah Ct. App. 1990). Thus, it appears that Utah follows the transactional approach of the Restatement (Second) of Judgments § 24. “The transactional test has been rearticulated by courts in a variety of ways, most of which focus upon whether the two suits are both based upon a discrete and unitary factual occurrence.” Yapp v. Excel Corp. , 186 F.3d 1222, 1227 (10th Cir. 1999). In Schaer v. State ex rel. Utah Department of Transportation , 657 P.2d 1337 (Utah 1983), the Utah Supreme Court held that res judicata was not applicable to bar a subsequent suit between the same parties because it was based on a different claim than that of the previous litigation; the two causes of action rested on a different state of facts and occurred during completely different and separate time periods; and evidence of a different kind or character was necessary to sustain the two causes of action. Id. at 1340. -13- Ms. Norris argues that the district court improperly applied res judicata to dismiss her counterclaims because Mr. Davis’s actions in making allegedly libelous and slanderous communications, invading her privacy, sending her confidential psychiatric records to individuals, abusing the federal judicial process by bringing frivolous and meritless suits against her for the sole purpose of harassment, and intentionally causing her emotional distress occurred in 1995-1996 and were not part of the alleged assault. We agree. Clearly, these subsequent tortious acts were not part of the alleged assault leading to Ms. Norris’s civil suit in 1987. The events do not overlap in a single operative fact. Further, they are not related in time, space, origin, or motivation, as the events giving rise to Ms. Norris’s counterclaims occurred at least seven years after Ms. Norris filed her state complaint. Because under Utah state law Ms. Norris’s counterclaims would not be barred under the doctrine of res judicata as applied in Schaer, supra , we hold that the court erred in dismissing those claims. 2. Statute of Limitations. Finally, we address Ms. Norris’s argument that the district court erred in holding that Utah’s one-year statute of limitations, rather than Florida’s two-year statute of limitations, should apply to her defamation claims. We review the district court’s choice of law determination -14- de novo. Rocky Mountain Helicopters, Inc. v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 24 F.3d 125, 128 (10th Cir. 1994). Below and on appeal, both parties assumed that Utah’s choice of law rules would govern the determination of whether Utah or Florida law (or even the law of some other state) supplies the statute of limitation relevant to Ms. Norris’s defamation claim. Ordinarily, the parties would have been quite correct in this assumption. See Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Elec. Mfg. Co., 313 U.S. 487, 496 (1941) (“The conflict of laws rules to be applied by the federal court in [a particular State] must conform to those prevailing in [that State’s] state courts.”); Rocky Mountain Helicopters, 24 F.3d at 128 (“In making choice of law determinations, a federal court sitting in diversity must apply the choice of law provisions of the forum state in which [the federal court] is sitting.”). In such a case, the choice of law determination would have been relatively straight-forward: “Utah follows the majority position that limitation periods are generally procedural in nature. Therefore, as a general rule, Utah’s statutes of limitation apply to actions brought in Utah.” Fin. Bancorp, Inc. v. Pingree & Dahle, Inc., 880 P.2d 14, 16 (Utah Ct. App. 1994) (internal citation omitted). Assuming that no particular exception applies, and we are unaware of one that would, Utah’s choice of law rules dictate the use of Utah’s one-year statute of -15- limitations. This one-year statute of limitations would leave Ms. Norris’s claim time-barred. Here, however, the situation is somewhat more complex. This action was originally filed not in federal district court in Utah but in federal district court in California. In such a situation, we must look to the choice of law rules of that State in which the suit was originally filed (i.e., the choice of law rules of California), unless the federal court in which the suit was originally filed never enjoyed personal jurisdiction over the defendant. See Van Dusen v. Barrack, 376 U.S. 612, 635-39 (1964) (“We conclude . . . [that] the transferee district court must be obligated to apply the state law that would have been applied if there had been no change of venue.”); Trierweiler v. Croxton & Trench Holding Corp., 90 F.3d 1523, 1532 (10th Cir. 1996) (creating the lack of personal jurisdiction exception). Here, then, because Mr. Davis originally filed this suit in California, the parties should have been examining California choice of law rules, unless the federal district court in California never maintained personal jurisdiction over Ms. Norris. If the California federal district court indeed lacked personal jurisdiction over Ms. Norris, then the Utah federal district court was correct to look to Utah’s choice of law provisions, choose Utah’s one-year statute of limitations, and dismiss Ms. Norris’s defamation claim. If, however, the California federal -16- district court did maintain personal jurisdiction over Ms. Norris, then the Utah federal district court should have examined California’s choice of law provisions for selection of the applicable statute of limitation. Since determination of whether the California federal district court exercised proper personal jurisdiction over Ms. Norris appears to remain an open question, and one which will likely require certain factual findings, we remand to the Utah federal district court for a determination on that issue and thus also for a determination of the statute of limitations issue. The judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Utah is REVERSED and REMANDED for further proceedings. Entered for the Court Robert H. Henry