Court Opinion

ID: 9895764
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-08 17:06:43.582892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:03.459162
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

                                   No. 22-1651
                             Filed November 8, 2023

LINUS F. VOVES and LINDA K. VOVES,
     Plaintiffs-Appellants,

vs.

TYLER HANSEN and NOELLE HANSEN,
     Defendants-Appellees.
________________________________________________________________

      Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Chickasaw County, John Sullivan,

Judge.

      A claimant appeals the district court’s order denying a petition for quiet title.

REVERSED AND REMANDED FOR NEW TRIAL.

      Siobhan Briley of Pugh Hagan Prahm PLC, Coralville, for appellants.

      Jeremy L. Thompson of Putnam, Thompson & Casper, P.L.L.C., Decorah,

for appellees.

      Considered by Schumacher, P.J., and Chicchelly and Buller, JJ.
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BULLER, Judge.

       A district court explicitly cited and made express credibility findings based

on an affidavit that was never admitted into evidence. In this appeal, we must

determine whether that error requires reversal. Applying our prejudice analysis for

nonconstitutional errors, we find it does. We reverse and remand for a new trial.

       The underlying facts are not particularly necessary to understand the error.

Linus and Linda Voves own property neighboring Tyler and Noelle Hansen in New

Hampton. The parties dispute ownership of a small parcel, 2/10 of an acre, and

the Voves family also brought claims related to the property line and alleged

trespass. Some of the contested factual questions include whether Linus knew

the land belonged to the Hansen family, whether the parties understood the

language of a quit-claim deed, and whether certain statements were made

between members of each family. See Voves v. Hansen, No. 20-1251, 2021

WL 3392816, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 4, 2021) (finding genuine issues of

material fact in this dispute precluded summary judgment).

       A contested trial was held with multiple witnesses. Dennis Hansen did not

testify. Yet the district court ruling1 expressly cited Dennis’s testimony by affidavit:

       The Court finds that Linus is not a credible witness. The Affidavit of
       Dennis Hansen, which was submitted to the Court without objection,
       indicates that as early as the 1980s Linus knew about this 2/10-acre
       parcel and that he wanted to try and work out some type of exchange
       with the Hansens in order to secure this parcel. The Court finds
       Dennis Hansen’s affidavit testimony of Linus Voves’s knowledge
       corroborated by the fact that the legal descriptions of the 19-acre
       tract, both in the real estate installment contract and the warranty

1 The district court’s ruling includes a spelling error for one of the parties, which we

have corrected without brackets.
                                           3

       deed, did not contain the legal description for the triangle property in
       question.

The ruling specifically claimed the affidavit “was submitted to the Court without

objection.”

       On appeal, the parties stipulated that “[n]either party offered Dennis

Hansen’s affidavit as an exhibit to be admitted at trial, nor was the affidavit

identified as a proposed trial exhibit on either party’s trial exhibit list.” The parties

further agreed the district court admitted two other exhibits that were not offered

into evidence at trial, although neither of those exhibits are at issue here. The filed

stipulation also recounts a conversation one of the parties had with the district court

clerk that uncovered the likely explanation for this snafu. In short, the three exhibits

(including the Hansen affidavit) had been filed as proposed exhibits for the

summary-judgment stage but never admitted.            When the judge admitted the

uncontested trial exhibits in the electronic interface, he likely admitted all of the

summary-judgment exhibits and did not distinguish between evidentiary trial

exhibits and exhibits supporting summary-judgment when rendering his ruling.

The parties agree error was preserved and the issue is properly before us on

appeal.

       The briefing spars over whether the district court’s error warrants reversal.

The Voves family cites our court’s published decision in Ruden v. Peach, 904

N.W.2d 410, 413–14 (Iowa Ct. App. 2017), where we discarded a credibility finding

based on the district court’s use of outside-the-record information—a report made

to the court about a witness’s behavior in the courthouse but not on the witness

stand. Although there are some parallels between this case and Ruden, that case
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does not squarely answer what standard or test we use to assess whether a fact-

finder expressly considering outside-the-record evidence requires reversal.

Neither do the parties’ briefs. Rather than proffer a methodology to assess the

error or supporting authority, the Hansen family argues some of the admitted

evidence would have also supported the district court finding Linus not credible.

Based on this remaining evidence, the Hansen family asserts we need not reverse.

Cf. Erickson v. Blake, No. 15-0251, 2016 WL 1130578 (Iowa Ct. App.

Mar. 23, 2016) (excluding improperly-admitted evidence from the court’s de novo

review).

        In our own research, we have found authority from other jurisdictions

addressing the comparable circumstance of jurors considering unadmitted

evidence during deliberations. The case law in this area generally holds that

prejudice is not presumed, but may be proven under the circumstances of each

case.   See, e.g., United States v. Walton, 403 F. Supp. 3d 839, 847 (C.D.

Cal. 2018) (finding no reversible error when jury received unadmitted exhibits,

promptly notified the court, and the court issued a curative instruction); Runner v.

Cadle Co., 511 S.E.2d 132, 134 (W. Va. 1998) (“Allowing a jury to take exhibits to

the jury room not admitted in evidence or those offered but excluded from evidence

may constitute reversible error where prejudice results therefrom.”); State of Md.

Deposit Ins. Fund Corp. v. Billman, 580 A.2d 1044, 1050 (Md. 1990) (“The

standard for evaluating whether a new trial should be granted under the

circumstances here, where the jury deliberations included unadmitted documents,

does not differ from a situation where the jury considers evidence admitted by the

trial court which is later determined to have been erroneously admitted.”); State v.
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Faulkner, 33 P.2d 175, 177 (Kan. 1934) (declining to reverse after jury considered

unadmitted exhibit because “there was other evidence supplying, perhaps less

definitely, the same information there furnished”).

       We conclude our existing prejudice standards are sufficient to analyze this

error. “[I]n a harmless error analysis where a nonconstitutional error is claimed,

under rule 5.103(a) we presume prejudice—that is, a substantial right of the

[appellant] is affected—and reverse unless the record affirmatively establishes

otherwise.” State v. Sullivan, 679 N.W.2d 19, 30 (Iowa 2004). We find the record

in this case does not affirmatively establish a lack of prejudice.

       Unlike a case where a jury receives unadmitted evidence and a judge

admonishes jurors to not consider the evidence or otherwise issues a curative

instruction, the court here was the finder of fact and did not disclaim reliance on

the affidavit. Cf. State v. Plain, 898 N.W.2d 801, 814 (Iowa 2017) (explaining a

cautionary instruction is often “sufficient to mitigate the prejudicial impact of

inadmissible evidence”); State v. Lovell, 857 N.W.2d 241, 243 (Iowa 2014)

(reversing a criminal sentence when the court considered information outside the

record). To the contrary, the district court cited the unadmitted affidavit multiple

times, and the court specifically used the affidavit to make a credibility finding about

another witness.

       We understand the Hansen family’s argument there may have been other

reasons to question Linus’s credibility. But this does not cure the error given that

“findings of fact in jury-waived cases shall have the effect of a special verdict.”

Iowa R. App. P. 6.907; see Ruden, 904 N.W.2d at 414 (finding “no basis for

deferring to the court’s credibility finding” when the relied-upon statement was not
                                         6

in the record).   The Hansen family also urges the affidavit may have been

cumulative to other evidence in the record. But we find that argument unavailing

given the court’s explicit fact-findings and that the author of the affidavit did not

testify at trial subject to cross-examination. For these reasons, we cannot say the

district court’s reliance on the unadmitted affidavit was harmless.

       The circumstances of this reversal are regrettable. It is unfortunate these

parties may be forced to bear the cost of another trial. While there are some

circumstances in which a fact-finder’s consideration of unadmitted exhibits may be

harmless, this case is not one of them. We must set aside the judgment and re-

affirm that Iowans should be able to trust that courts will only decide cases based

on the evidence before them.

       REVERSED AND REMANDED FOR NEW TRIAL.