Court Opinion

ID: 9575386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:13:26.134385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:09.660511
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice, Retired,
dissenting.
This case provides a continuing examination of the campaign by certain state (including judicial) officials against Terrence *773Amrein. See Amrein v. State, 836 P.2d 862 (Wyo.1992).
In the present case, appellant, Terrence Amrein (Amrein), sued state veterinary officials who deliberately destroyed one of his animals suffering from an alleged incurable disease. At the same time, the State was prosecuting Amrein on various charges to which Justice of the Peace William W. Cramer originally sentenced Am-rein to eight consecutive six-month sentences and a fine in the amount of $6,000, for a total confinement in county jail of four years. Amrein, 836 P.2d at 863.
In this civil damage case, taken on appeal pro se, Amrein presents two issues: (1) improper grant of summary judgment by the trial court when issues of fact existed, Cordova v. Gosar, 719 P.2d 625 (Wyo.1986); and (2) insufficiency of the evidence to justify destruction of his property in compliance with state law.
Appellees, as state officials, changed the scope of the appeal attacking the lack of proof of satisfaction of the statute of limitation for professional malpractice, Wyo. Stat. § 1-3-107 (1988), as well as the technical insufficiency of the pro se appellate brief.
This court’s majority resolves the case on a basis not submitted by any of the litigants. It is from that adjudicatory readjustment and its failure to provide Amrein due process to litigate his “state taking” claim that I dissent. Implicit in my disagreement is that Amrein’s liberty interests were tried in the criminal prosecution by a far from disinterested jury, but he has also been denied even that access in this property deprivation litigation.
The court reaches this stage by creating an entirely new obstacle in the mine field litigants must pass. It is now deemed jurisdictional, in the case of a claim against a state official under the state’s general claims statutes, Wyo.Stat. § 1-39-101 through § 1-39-120 (1988 & Cum.Supp. 1992), to allege pleading a date of filing the claim. In other words, to be defensible from a motion to dismiss, it is not now sufficient to allege timely filing or filing, but the date of filing must now be alleged so that adjudicatory review can be pursued on a motion to dismiss premise.
It might be true, as the majority now finds as a fact, that it “would be impossible for Amrein to present the requisite allegations,” but it might also be possible, within contested issues found in abundance in this case of human and animal tragedy, to find the opposite. In any event, appellate implementation of this new principle of pleading at this stage as a jurisdictional requirement denies, in my opinion, Amrein due process and access to the courts. Wyo. Const, art. 1, § 6, due process; Wyo. Const, art. 1, § 8, open courts.
I am even less satisfied with the second segment of the majority opinion where, lacking a jurisdictional avenue for appellate disposition, the decision falls back into the pertinent authority and cogent argument disability for this pro se litigant.
Amrein contended that the litigation disposition was summary judgment. In view of the “evidence” in the record, I would agree. If this was a summary judgment conversion, W.R.C.P. 56, from a motion to dismiss, W.R.C.P. 12(b)(6), I would also accept the pro se litigant’s presentation as adequate to present his argument and contention regarding summary judgment disposition without the necessity to recite the multitude of Wyoming cases directed to a principle of non-trial of issues of fact in summary judgment. See, in recent review, Drake v. Winkler, 838 P.2d 1177 (Wyo.1992) and Stalkup v. State Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), 838 P.2d 705 (Wyo.1992). In general analysis, see also Cordova, 719 P.2d 625.
Consequently, I respectfully dissent and continue searching for a requirement for our courts to provide an avenue and access to justice without indispensably requiring participation by lawyers. Osborn v. Emporium Videos, 848 P.2d 237 (Wyo.1993).