Court Opinion

ID: 9796962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:09:17.288545+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:51.893051
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(dissenting):
¶24 This is a tough case. We have no experience with a settlement, otherwise complete, that leaves fot the trial court the single question of prejudgment interest. And the lead opinion cites no ease dealing with such an atypical scenario. Without authority or experience to guide us, we are basically freestyling in trying to resolve this appeal.
¶ 25 I would have little disagreement with my colleagues if, in reaching their settlement, the parties stipulated that the amount still due under their contract was $43,500. Or if that amount was nothing more than the sum of a class of invoices — maybe those initialed by the Gurneys; or those attributable *459to, say, the roof expansion; or those incurred between two significant dates. But such is not the ease. The rather round sum of $43,500 is — not unlike an award for pain and suffering or damage to reputation — a figure that has essentially been plucked from the air, albeit by the parties rather than a jury. As such, it no doubt includes some component for unpaid work that the Gurneys think they owe, or at least that they are pretty sure the trial court would find they owe. But it also includes the value of being spared additional days in court, leaving them free to more productively spend their time, and of having their property free of a lien that limits its marketability. It also includes potentially significant amounts allocable to stanching the flow of additional bills for attorney fees and to avoiding the risk in any litigation of a judgment reflecting a worst-case scenario.
¶26 My problem, then, is a very simple one. I cannot tell how much of the settlement amount, if any, is for the kind of thing that may warrant an award of prejudgment interest and how much reflects the range of imponderables inherent in any settlement decision. Iron Head, as the party who would benefit from the determination, bore the burden of establishing “the factual predicate supporting [its] claim for prejudgment interest.” Cheves v. Williams, 1999 UT 86, ¶ 43, 993 P.2d 191. In the odd posture of this case, it clearly failed to do so. I would therefore vacate the award of prejudgment interest.