Bryner v. Cardon Outreach, LLC

• Decision Date: 24 September 2018
• Docket Number: No. 20160818,20160818
• Citation: 428 P.3d 1096
• Parties: Zachary BRYNER, Nenita R. Ezar, Michelle Gallagher, and Christopher Furr, Appellants, v. CARDON OUTREACH, LLC, IHC Health Services, Inc., St. Mark’s Hospital, University of Utah Health Care, and State of Utah, Appellees.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

428 P.3d 1096

Zachary BRYNER, Nenita R. Ezar, Michelle Gallagher, and Christopher Furr, Appellants,

v.CARDON OUTREACH, LLC, IHC Health Services, Inc., St. Mark’s Hospital, University of Utah Health Care, and State of Utah, Appellees.

No. 20160818

Supreme Court of Utah.

Filed September 24, 2018

Robert B. Sykes, Alyson Carter McAllister, Daniel Oswald, Salt Lake City, for appellants

Gregory John Wilder, Provo, for appellant Nenita R. Ezar Sean D. Reyes, Att’y Gen., Peggy Stone, Asst. Sol. Gen., Salt Lake City, for appellees University of Utah Health Care and State of Utah Derek J. Williams, P. Matthew Cox, Nathaniel J. Mitchell, Salt Lake City, for appellee Cardon Outreach, LLC Alan C. Bradshaw, Steven C. Bednar, Salt Lake City, for appellee IHC Health Services, Inc.

Andrew G. Deiss, Billie Jean Siddoway, Salt Lake City, Sean Gallagher, Denver, CO, for appellee St. Mark’s Hospital

Justice Himonas authored the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Durrant, Associate Chief Justice Lee, Justice Pearce, and Justice Petersen joined.

On Direct Appeal

Justice Himonas, opinion of the Court:

INTRODUCTION

¶1 The question before us is not a particularly thorny one: what is the correct interpretation of Utah’s Hospital Lien Statute? See UTAH CODE § 38-7-1. Recognizing that this question is purely one of law, the parties sensibly agreed to stay discovery and filed cross-motions for summary judgment at the outset of the case.

¶2 The plaintiffs¹ argued that the Hospital Lien Statute "requires a hospital to pay its proportional share of an injured person’s attorney fees and costs when a hospital lien is paid due to the efforts of the injured person or his or her attorney." The defendants² countered that the statute contains no such language, and that the statute operates instead "to establish a priority system as to entitlement to settlement funds to allow hospitals to get paid."

¶3 The district court concluded that the hospitals’ interpretation was correct, as it was "the only reasonable [interpretation] that ma[de] sense given the context of the statute read as a whole." More specifically, the district court granted summary judgment to the hospitals, finding that "even giving [the] [patients] the benefit of the doubt concerning ... [their] tortured (albeit possible) interpretation of Subsection (1)(a), ... [o]nly [the hospitals’] interpretation reconciles the [Hospital Lien] [S]tatute as a whole ." The patients appealed. We are in full agreement with the district court’s conclusions and therefore affirm the grant of summary judgment.

BACKGROUND

¶4 Because the parties have stipulated that the focal issue in this case is the interpretation of the Hospital Lien Statute, the facts in this matter are not at issue. This proposed class action involves persons injured in car accidents who filed personal injury claims against the third parties at fault. All had hospital liens placed on any potential recovery from those claims, and all reached settlement agreements, paying their attorney fees by way of a contingent fee on the recovery. In each case, the patient used the settlement proceeds to pay attorney fees and associated costs and then the entirety of the asserted hospital lien, retaining the remaining balance, if any.

¶5 The patients contend that the hospitals failed to pay their "fair share" of the attorney fees (including court costs and other necessary expenses) the patients incurred in generating the settlement proceeds. And they further contend that, under the Hospital Lien Statute, the hospitals should be required to reimburse them for the proportion of those attorney fees that the hospitals should have been required to pay in order to equitably share the costs of obtaining the settlement proceeds.³ The district court disagreed with the patients’ interpretation of the statute and granted summary judgment to the hospitals. We agree with the district court that the reading of the plain language of the statute as a whole yields the hospitals’ interpretation and find that the language is not ambiguous. But even if the language were ambiguous, the substantive terms canon would negate the patients’ interpretation. We also conclude that the common fund doctrine offers the patients no relief.

¶6 We have jurisdiction under Utah Code section 78A-3-102(3)(j).

STANDARD OF REVIEW

¶7 "A district court’s interpretation of a statute is a question of law, which we ... review for correctness." Harvey v. Cedar Hills City , 2010 UT 12, ¶ 10, 227 P.3d 256. "We review a district court’s grant of summary judgment for correctness. We affirm a grant of summary judgment when the record shows ‘there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.’ " Id. (footnote omitted) (quoting UTAH R. CIV. P. 56(c) ).

ANALYSIS

¶8 The Hospital Lien Statute authorizes hospitals that treat persons injured in accidents to file liens on the personal injury claims arising out of those accidents. See UTAH CODE § 38-7-1. The parties disagree about the effect of the Hospital Lien Statute in allocating the attorney fees and costs of the personal injury litigation. In particular, the parties disagree about the meaning of subsections 1(a) and 1(b) of the statute. These subsections state

(1) (a) Except as provided in Subsection (3), a hospital located within the state that furnishes emergency, medical, or other service to a patient injured by reason of an accident is entitled to assert a lien upon that portion of the judgment, settlement, or compromise going or belonging to the patient, or, in the case of death, to the patient’s heirs or personal representatives, less the amount paid by the patient, or on behalf of the patient by heirs or personal representatives, for attorney fees, court costs, and other necessary expenses incidental to obtaining the judgment, settlement, or compromise.

(b) No reduction of the asserted lien amount is allowed other than the amount paid by the patient, or the patient’s heirs, or personal representatives for attorney fees, court costs, and other necessary expenses incidental to litigation, unless otherwise agreed to in writing by the lien claimant.

Id. § 38-7-1(1).

I. STATUTORY INTERPRETATION

¶9 "Our goal when confronted with questions of statutory interpretation is to evince the true intent and purpose of the Legislature. It is axiomatic that the best evidence of legislative intent is the plain language of the statute itself." Anderson v. Bell , 2010 UT 47, ¶ 9, 234 P.3d 1147 (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted), superseded on other grounds by statute UTAH CODE § 20A-9-502. The first step of statutory interpretation is to look to the plain language, and "[w]here statutory language is plain and unambiguous, this Court will not look beyond the same to divine legislative intent. Rather, we are guided by the rule that a statute should generally be construed according to its plain language" Garrard v. Gateway Fin. Servs., Inc. , 2009 UT 22, ¶ 11, 207 P.3d 1227 (citation omitted).

¶10 Additionally, "we read the plain language of the statute as a whole, and interpret its provisions in harmony with other statutes in the same chapter and related chapters." State v. Barrett , 2005 UT 88, ¶ 29, 127 P.3d 682 (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). If, after conducting this plain language review we are left with competing reasonable interpretations, there is statutory ambiguity. Marion Energy, Inc. v. KFJ Ranch P’ship , 2011 UT 50, ¶ 15, 267 P.3d 863 (Noting that statutory language is ambiguous if "its terms remain susceptible to two or more reasonable interpretations after we have conducted a plain language analysis"). However, "a statute susceptible to competing interpretations may nevertheless be unambiguous if the text of the act as a whole, in light of related statutory provisions, makes all but one of those meanings implausible." Utah Pub. Emps. Ass’n v. State , 2006 UT 9, ¶ 60, 131 P.3d 208 (Parrish, J., concurring).

¶11 In this statute, there is no ambiguity. The district court correctly decided that although each party offers a different possible interpretation of the Hospital Lien Statute, only one interpretation is plausible given the text of the act as a whole. Only the hospitals’ interpretation makes sense on its face under the ordinary meaning of the words as used in the statute and harmonizes the language in subsections 1(a) and 1(b) of the statute. Thus, finding no ambiguity, we determine the statute’s meaning by its plain language.

A. The Whole-Text Canon and the Grammatical Structure of Subsection (1)

¶12 "[T]he whole-text canon ... calls on the judicial interpreter to consider the entire text, in view of its structure and of the physical and logical relation of its many parts." ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 167 (2012). "Often, statutory text may not be plain when read in isolation, but may become so in light of its linguistic, structural, and statutory context. The reverse is equally true: words or phrases may appear unambiguous when read in isolation, but become ambiguous when read in context." State v. Rushton , 2017 UT 21, ¶ 11, 395 P.3d 92 (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

¶13 Read as a whole, Utah Code section 38-7-1(1) creates a priority for the distribution of the "judgment, settlement, or compromise going or belonging to the patient." Id. § 38-7-1(1)(a).⁴ The judgment is first used to pay "attorney fees, court costs, and other necessary expenses"⁵ accrued in obtaining the judgment. Id. Subsection 1(a) allows a hospital to assert a lien on the remaining amount of the judgment to obtain payment for medical expenses incurred in treating the patient as a result of the action being litigated (provided that the amount is greater than $100). Id. § 38-7-1(1)(a), (c). Subsection 1(b) establishes that the hospital has priority over any other creditor or the patient to the entirety of...