Court Opinion

ID: 9613789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:19:59.294862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:31.870431
License: Public Domain

RAPER, Justice,
dissenting.
I join in the dissent of Justice Thomas but would go further. It is bad enough to erroneously decide a question, as pointed out by Justice Thomas, but if the court even decides the question it has on the record before it, then we may as well throw to the winds all our carefully drawn rules of orderly procedure.
There is nothing before the court for its consideration. The case was brought into the district court as a petition for review under the Administrative Procedure Act. To supplement that petition for review, the petitioner also filed in the district court, not with the Highway Commission, a “notice of appeal,” which is identical to the petition for review. In fact, they were both filed on the same date. There is no administrative record of any sort of any administrative hearing, not even a copy of any order of the Wyoming Highway Commission denying the claim of Rissler & McMurry. A final decision is, as I understand it, prescribed by § 9-4-110, W.S.1977:
“A final decision or order adverse to a party in a contested case shall be in writing or dictated into the record. The final decision shall include findings of fact and conclusions of law separately stated. Findings of fact if set forth in statutory language, shall be accompanied by a concise and explicit statement of the underlying facts supporting the findings. Parties shall be notified either personally or by mail of any decision or order. A copy of the decision and order shall be delivered or mailed forthwith to each party or to his attorney of record.”
In administrative proceedings, this court always considered the findings of fact and conclusions of law to be of utmost importance and this court has remanded cases back through the district court for preparation of adequate findings of fact and conclusions of law. Pan American Petroleum Corporation v. Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, Wyo., 1968, 446 P.2d 550. Here, there is not only no decision, but no findings of fact and conclusions of law. There is not only no decision, including findings of findings of fact and conclusions *592of law, but there is no record. The Administrative Procedure Act provides, in § 9-4-107(o), W.S.1977:
“(o) Record.—The record in a contested case must include:
“(i) All formal or informal notices, pleadings, motions, intermediate rulings;
“(ii) Evidence received or considered including matters officially noticed;
“(iii) Questions and offers of proof, objections, and rulings thereon;
“(iv) Any proposed findings and exceptions thereto;
“(v) Any opinion, findings, decision or order of the agency and any report by the officer presiding at the hearing.”
There was therefore nothing before the district court to review and there is nothing before this court to review. Without a record, it is impossible for this court to hand down a considered decision.
I am not sure but what the petitioner Rissler & McMurry may have had in mind that it filed a complaint but called it a petition for review and “a notice of appeal.” The State may have looked at it that way because it filed an answer and set up an affirmative defense, later filed an amended answer and set up a second affirmative defense and finally filed a third amended answer and set up a third affirmative defense. However, the district court ended up making a strange order treating the proceedings as a petition for review in which he made at least one odd finding:
“4. That the Court presumes that said decision was supported by substantial evidence;” (Emphasis added.)
It went through the motions of following § 9-4-114(c), W.S.1977, in limiting its determination to the five items there set out.
The whole affair—I cannot dignify it by calling it a case—is a spurious proceeding from beginning to end and is neither an administrative appeal nor direct action— not fish, not fowl. If it is an administrative review, the matter should be remanded to the district court with instructions to, in turn, remand it to the Wyoming State Highway Commission to hold a hearing and conform to the Wyoming Administrative Procedure Act.
If the “petition for review” is to be considered as a complaint and the case is to be treated on the answers filed by the state, then the motion to dismiss should properly be allowed because this court has repeatedly held that a condition precedent to the filing of a lawsuit requires that a claim be filed with the state auditor. Utah Construction Co. v. State Highway Commission, 1933, 45 Wyo. 403, 19 P.2d 951; Price v. State Highway Commission, 1946, 62 Wyo. 385, 167 P.2d 309; Awe v. University of Wyoming, Wyo. 1975, 534 P.2d 97, reh. den., and most recently, Wyoming State Highway Department v. Napolitano, Wyo. 1978, 578 P.2d 1342.
I see no reason to scold the highway department. It had a duty under these outlandish circumstances to raise the question, it being impossible to determine just what sort of a proceeding was before the court.