Opinion ID: 1156814
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Did Jay's Actions Constitute Contempt Advice of Counsel as a Defense

Text: In L.A.M. v. State, 547 P.2d 827, 831 (Alaska 1976), this court set forth the following requirements for a contempt order: (1) the existence of a valid order directing the alleged contemnor to do or refrain from doing something and the court's jurisdiction to enter that order; (2) the contemnor's notice of the order within sufficient time to comply with it; and in most cases, (3) the contemnor's ability to comply with the order; and (4) the contemnor's wilful failure to comply with the order. Jay argues that he did not willfully fail to comply with the court's order because he did so on advice of counsel. This argument is without merit. In McKnight v. Rice, Hoppner, Brown & Brunner, 678 P.2d 1330, 1334 (Alaska 1984), this court noted: Once a party is ordered by a court to assign a claim, that party has a duty to comply with the order forthwith. If the party ignores the order and assigns the claim to a third person, his act would be both wrongful and contemptuous.2 2 If his attorney had advised such a course of conduct the attorney would share complicitly in the wrong. (Citations omitted). Implicit in the McKnight court's statement in footnote 2 is the proposition that advice of counsel is not a shield when a party ignores a court order. [9] The fact that Jay's counsel was seeking to exhaust all potential avenues of relief from enforcement of the judgment does not justify his failure of more than one year to comply with the court's order to transfer the stock. There was no confusion over the meaning of the court's order to transfer the stock. Both attorney and client were clearly put on notice that their delay tactics were inappropriate when the court issued the July 17, 1987 order. [10]