Court Opinion

ID: 9846153
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:35:47.561766+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:34.383448
License: Public Domain

THOMPSON, Judge,
dissenting.
¶ 29 Wife believed that the trial conducted by Judge Howe did not go well,1 and so she sabotaged it2 with a scurrilous, ex parte, *165thirteen-page single-spaced communication with the trial court, blasting her soon-to-be ex-husband and his lawyer as “liars,” describing her own lawyer as “malicious and irrational,” and concluding that the court should not make an equal distribution of community assets but rather hold wife “blameless” in the dissolution and “find in her favor.” The letter set forth an elaboration of evidentiary assertions not admitted at trial and made other scandalous accusations against Husband and his counsel.
¶ 30 Judge Hutt, having determined, with considerable support in the record, that Wife was to blame for the circumstances that led to Judge Howe’s decision to recuse himself, considered sanctioning Wife with the fees and costs of a new trial. Judge Hutt instead decided to make her rulings impartially on the transcripts. I would find no abuse of discretion in this moderate solution to a problem engendered by Wife’s incredible misconduct.
¶31 But the majority finds fault with Judge Hutt’s decision to proceed, under Rule 63, to “take over where Judge Howe left off,” because it concludes that Judge Hutt did not consider the “disintegration” of Wife’s relationship with her lawyer as a factor in causing the mistrial. I find no support for the majority’s conclusion in this regard. Judge Hutt knew what Judge Howe had written in the minute entry about Wife’s relationship with her lawyer and Judge Hutt did not buy it.3 Wife had blamed her poor showing at trial on Husband, his lawyer, her own lawyer, and Judge Howe. Judge Hutt was justified in concluding that Wife purposely scuttled the trial. Judge Hutt dealt with it by putting the parties back, as best she could, in the position they would have been in had Wife not misbehaved.
¶32 Rule 63 authorized the course of proceeding which Judge Hutt undertook. Indeed, on appeal Wife has not pointed to any prejudice caused specifically by the decision not to rehear five testimony.4 While Wife complains about the substantive rulings Judge Hutt made in settling the marital estate, Wife insists that her own position was supported in nearly every case by uncontra-dicted evidence. Never does she note an instance in which a ruling went against her because the judge made an unfounded credibility determination. She calls Husband a liar but does not give any example where Judge Hutt determined a matter based on a belief in Husband’s truthfulness. Wife has not demonstrated the prejudice that would have precluded Judge Hutt from picking up “where Judge Howe left off,” and, quite clearly, any disadvantage Wife could have theoretically suffered is quite properly attributed to her own misconduct. I would affirm.

. Wife told Judge Hutt after reassignment of the case, “X do think you should read [the trial transcripts]. And I think it will be evident what took place in the trial. And that’s why it ended up in mistrial. And it favors my husband all the way through, Judge Howe did.”

. Judge Hutt found that Wife’s letter contained personal attacks and caused Judge Howe to feel *165that any rulings he may make would be “tainted,” setting "the whole thing up to be undone in any event.” Judge Hutt said:
But when you are in a trial and there is evidence being taken in the trial, and then the trial is over, and somebody then communicates with the Judge on substantive matters in that trial where the other side doesn’t have a chance to be heard, you have effectively trashed the entire trial and opened it up.
And when there are allegations made in terms of the Judge’s consideration, where the Judge doesn’t feel he can any longer be an impartial determiner of the facts and make a determination effectively, what you did when you did that was take all of those efforts at trial and basically waste them and start anew.

. Judge Howe did not purport to have determined that there had been a "disintegration” of Wife’s relationship with her lawyer based on anything he observed at trial. As the majority acknowledges, it was Wife’s letter that revealed the rift. Judge Hutt was in as good a position to read the letter and evaluate it as was Judge Howe; indeed, if he was "tainted” by having read the letter, Judge Howe should not have declared a mistrial or made any further substantive ruling. And Judge Howe also never indicated any determination that the attorney-client problem revealed in the letter had indeed impaired the basic fairness of the trial itself.

. The majority writes: “We cannot conclude that the credibility of these two witnesses played no role in how the matters in dispute were to be decided____” But it is clearly Wife’s burden on appeal to establish an abuse of discretion. Neither the opening nor reply briefs point to anything which would support the kind of conclusion that we would have to reach to properly find an abuse of discretion in the decision not to replay the trial, i.e., that credibility determinations had to be made to determine the matters in dispute.