Court Opinion

ID: 9790162
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:47:31.451481+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:26.852921
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
I dissent, respectfully suggesting that the facts as related in plaintiff’s brief themselves make it appear that a prosecutor, a magistrate or a trial judge reasonably could have concluded that probable cause was more than evident. His brief shows that the money involved was corporate funds in defendant’s account prior to and on February 17, the last day of plaintiff’s employment. On February 18, at a time when plaintiff no longer was employed by defendant, he withdrew the funds, which, under Title 31-17-22, U.C.A.1953, were trust funds. He deposited them to his personal account in the same bank. Later he deposited them elsewhere locally. Finally he left the state and took the funds with him, depositing them in his own name in a California bank. Doing so he employed a terminated fiduciary relationship to withdraw funds belonging to a former employer. Had the funds been so withdrawn and deposited in his name a year after his employment was ended, little difficulty would be met in finding a misappropriation. The time of appropriation is but a matter of- degree and not one of justification or transmutation'of irregularity into . regularity. Plaintiff well might have frozen the funds in orderly fashion in a suit to pursue any claimed amount due, but, in asserting his claim, he chose the irregular method of exercising unauthorized dominion over funds in which he had no interest or claim.
In addition to the foregoing, I believe the main opinion has overextended itself in approving and excusing plaintiff’s conduct, in implying that the county attorney acted in bad faith and in upsetting the decision of the trial court. The opinion has the following to say:
“Appellant herein having openly and avowedly appropriated the money under a claim of title, which, if made in good faith [italics supplied], could not have been guilty of any crime and an acquittal under such circumstances is evidence of lack of probable cause in a suit for malicious prosecution because it tends to prove that the prosecutor did not have a reasonable belief that the crime was actually committed.”
This statement is a non sequitur demanding a concession of fact and conclusion obviously not shared by the county attorney, the district attorney, the committing magistrate or the trial judge, — unless all were acting in bad faith or with unreasonably misguided judgment. The statement seems to attribute to the public officials the necessary malice rather than to the complaining witness: Nowhere in the opinion is found reference to any conduct of defendant *327constituting much of anything except a presentation of the facts to the county attorney who issued the complaint, and the opinion points to no mala fides of any kind, unless by way of conjecture.
In this type of action, generally frowned upon in our legal system, surely some kind of showing should be revealed that would justify presentation of the case to the jury. The main opinion devotes itself only to a repetition of certain generalities lifted from the Restatement, quotations from embezzlement statutes and a brief reference to a Kentucky case involving malicious prosecution, whose examination will show a distinct factual difference. Nothing in the opinion links defendant with the elements of a malicious prosecution situation, and the only conclusion reachable is a remote inference that, because we reverse the trial court, defendant must have been guilty of something, — what, we don’t know. Under such circumstances few would be willing to sign a criminal complaint even though they might know and it might be quite apparent that an offense had been committed and the accused the easily .identifiable one who did it.
It was made clear in Uhr v. Eaton, 95 Utah 309, 80 P.2d 925, 928, that:
“It is the duty of a complainant to make a full, fair and complete disclosure of the facts within his knowledge to the public prosecutor, and also all facts which he had reasonable ground to believe existed at the time of making the statement, or all facts which' he could have ascertained by reasonable diligence, and that, having done so, he can successfully defend, by reason of such disclosure and the acting on the advice received thereon, any malicious prosecution action brought against him.”
There is nothing in the main opinion demonstrating that defendant did not satisfy this defensive test. The judgment should be affirmed.