Opinion ID: 172372
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Due Process (Vagueness)

Text: Section 57-1-21(1)(a)(i) requires an attorney trustee to maintain[] a place within the state where the trustor or other interested parties may meet with the trustee to request information or deliver funds or written communications. The term maintain a place is not defined in the statute. About all that we can readily infer is that maintaining a place is less onerous than maintaining a bona fide office, as required by the previous version of the statute, which was amended in response to Mr. Kleinsmith's successful challenge to its bona-fide-office requirement. The statute, both before and after the most recent amendment, defines a bona fide office as a physical office in the state ... that is open to the public; ... staffed during regular business hours on regular business days; and ... at which a trustor of a trust deed may in person: ... request information regarding a trust deed; or... deliver funds, including reinstatement or payoff funds. Utah Stat. Ann. § 57-1-21(1)(b). The district court's opinion granting summary judgment did not attempt to provide a complete definition of maintain a place, but it offered the following observations when addressing Mr. Kleinsmith's Commerce Clause argument: [The statute] does not prohibit attorney-trustees from sharing office space or other resources, such as support staff, with other parties. Moreover, [the provision regulating attorney trustees] and the Statute as a whole do not require that the place maintained by attorney-trustees be open to the public during all regular business hours on all regular business days, as required of title-company-trustees, and do not unreasonably restrict out-of-state attorney-trustees from also maintaining a practice or working in other states. Aplt.App. at 269. (The court also noted that resident attorney-trustees could use their homes as their places under the statute; but it is not clear to us that many attorneys would wish to disclose their home addresses to people threatened with foreclosure, much less meet them for business at their homes.) A statute violates the due-process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment if it forbid[s] or requir[es] conduct in terms so vague that [persons] of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application. Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 367, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964). On appeal Mr. Kleinsmith contends that § 57-1-21(1)(a)(i) is void because the word place in the statutory text and as interpreted by [the district court] is unconstitutionally vague. Aplt. Br. 18. But he did not raise a vagueness challenge in his motion for summary judgment or in his response to Mr. Shurtleff's cross-motion. He first mentioned vagueness in his motion to reconsider the summary judgment against him, and even then it was only a passing reference in his challenge to the district court's rejection of his earlier arguments. The court did not address the issue in its one-page ruling on that motion. We decline to reach the merits of Mr. Kleinsmith's vagueness claim. His failure to raise a vagueness challenge to the statute before the district court entered summary judgment bars such a challenge on appeal. See FDIC v. Noel, 177 F.3d 911, 915 (10th Cir.1999). Of course, if the district court had exercised its discretion to address that challenge in Mr. Kleinsmith's motion for reconsideration, the matter would be preserved for appeal. See Holland v. Big River Minerals Corp., 181 F.3d 597, 605 (4th Cir.1999); Quest Med., Inc. v. Apprill, 90 F.3d 1080, 1087 (5th Cir.1996). But the district court did not do so, which was a proper exercise of its discretion. See Elephant Butte Irrigation Dist. v. U.S. Dep't of Interior, 538 F.3d 1299, 1303-04 (10th Cir.2008). It follows that the claim was not preserved for appeal. See also Burnette v. Dresser Indus., Inc., 849 F.2d 1277, 1285 (10th Cir. 1988) (declining to consider issue that was first raised in district court in motion to reconsider, and which district court did not address); Iverson v. City of Boston, 452 F.3d 94, 104 (1st Cir.2006) (The presentation of a previously unpled and undeveloped argument in a motion for reconsideration neither cures the original omission nor preserves the argument as a matter of right for appellate review.). Mr. Kleinsmith suggests that only after the district court ruled on the summary-judgment motion could he have raised a claim that the statute as interpreted by the district court was unconstitutionally vague. Perhaps he is right, but he did not raise this particular vagueness argument even in his motion to reconsider the summary judgment. Accordingly, we do not address this argument either. Although we do not consider whether § 57-1-21(1)(a)(i) is unconstitutionally vague, we note that the uncertainty in the provision's meaning lurks over several of Mr. Kleinsmith's remaining arguments. As we shall see, the validity of several of his challenges to the statute depends on the burden that the statute places upon nonresident attorneysa burden that he must prove to prevail. He has failed to present that proof, perhaps in large part because he has been unable to show what the statute would require of him. One might say that his constitutional challenges are premature; until there is clarity concerning the statutory command, a proper analysis of the constitutionality of the burden imposed on him is impossible.