Buboltz v. Birusingh

• Decision Date: 11 June 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-1724,19-1724
• Parties: David BUBOLTZ and Donna Reece, Appellants, v. Patricia BIRUSINGH, Estate of Cletis C. Ireland, and Kumari Durick, Appellees.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

962 N.W.2d 747

David BUBOLTZ and Donna Reece, Appellants,

v.Patricia BIRUSINGH, Estate of Cletis C. Ireland, and Kumari Durick, Appellees.

No. 19-1724

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Submitted March 23, 2021

Filed June 11, 2021

Rehearing Denied August 25, 2021

Alexander E. Wonio (argued) of Hansen, McClintock & Riley, Des Moines, and Tyler M. Smith of Smith Law Firm, PLC, Altoona, for appellants.

Charles Wittmack (argued) of Hartung Schroeder Law Firm, Des Moines, and Jamie L. Cox, Paul S. Wilson, and Lonny L. Kolln II of Willson & Pechacek, P.L.C., Council Bluffs, (until withdrawal) for appellees.

McDermott, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all participating justices joined. Christensen, C.J., took no part in the consideration or the decision of the case.

McDERMOTT, Justice.

In this case, we must answer whether a cause of action for tortious interference with inheritance requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant had knowledge of the plaintiff's expectation to receive an inheritance from the decedent. The inheritance in dispute comes from a woman named Cletis Ireland, who died in March 2016 at age 92. She was an only child, never married, and had no children. Her estate included her family's century farm where she had lived most of her adult life.

In 2001, Ireland executed a will that would have given her farm in equal shares to David Buboltz, a cash rent farmer who had been leasing about eighty acres on the farm since 1991, and Edith Mae Maertens, her cousin. But in 2015, Ireland executed a new will. The new will removed both Maertens, who had died in 2008, and Buboltz as the beneficiaries of her farm and purported to give the farm instead to Kumari Durick, the daughter of a family friend. Ireland named Durick's mother, Patricia Birusingh, as the executor of her estate in the new will.

Birusingh was married to Ireland's doctor. Ireland, sometime after she executed the 2001 will, grew close to the Birusingh family. When Ireland due to her advancing age could no longer drive a car, Birusingh and Durick began bringing her groceries, driving her to appointments, and running other errands for her. Birusingh and Durick characterized themselves as good neighbors, taking care of an elderly friend in need who, of her own volition, chose to include them in her will.

Buboltz and Reece, on the other hand, characterized Birusingh and Durick as conspirators in a Machiavellian plot, preying on the vulnerabilities of an isolated elderly woman to convince her to bequeath her farm to them in exchange for their help. Shortly after Ireland died, one of Maertens's daughters (and thus Ireland's first cousin once removed) named Donna Reece, along with Buboltz, filed a lawsuit to set aside Ireland's 2015 will. Their petition alleged several causes of action against Birusingh and Durick, including undue influence and tortious interference with inheritance.

Prior to trial, Birusingh and Durick sought summary judgment on the tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim. They argued that this cause of action requires proof, among other things, that a defendant knew of the plaintiff's expected inheritance from the decedent. Birusingh and Durick claimed that no evidence existed to show that they had knowledge of any expected inheritance by Buboltz or Reece related to Ireland's 2001 will or, for that matter, that they had any knowledge of Ireland's 2001 will whatsoever. Buboltz and Reece countered that, despite no direct evidence proving knowledge, circumstantial evidence created disputes of material fact concerning what Birusingh and Durick knew, and that these factual disputes required the court to deny summary judgment. The district court found none of the plaintiff's circumstantial evidence sufficient to create a dispute of material fact and thus granted the motion and dismissed the plaintiffs’ tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim. Buboltz and Reece voluntarily dismissed other claims but maintained the undue influence cause of action.

During the trial, Buboltz and Reece requested that the district court instruct the jury on the dismissed tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim. The district court refused. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Buboltz and Reece on the undue influence claim.

Both sides appeal. Buboltz and Reece appeal the dismissal of the tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim, arguing that the district court erroneously determined that the tort required proof that a defendant possess knowledge of a plaintiff's expected inheritance. They further argue that, even if we find the tort includes such a requirement, the district court erred in concluding that no dispute of material fact existed on the issue. Birusingh and Durick cross-appeal, arguing a new trial is necessary based on the admission of improper hearsay testimony and improper statements by opposing counsel during his closing argument.

I.

We begin with the question of whether knowledge of a plaintiff's expectancy of an inheritance from the decedent is an element of tortious interference with inheritance. We review the district court's summary judgment ruling for correction of legal error. Lewis v. Howard L. Allen Invs., Inc. , 956 N.W.2d 489, 490 (Iowa 2021).

We first recognized the existence of an "independent cause of action for the wrongful interference with a bequest" in Frohwein v. Haesemeyer in 1978. 264 N.W.2d 792, 795 (Iowa 1978). We've addressed this tort again in our opinions in the intervening decades only three times. In the first, in 1991, we held that the plaintiffs were procedurally barred from pursuing a tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim when two valid, uncontested codicils reaffirmed an earlier codicil (which eliminated the plaintiffs’ bequest) because the claim in that situation constituted a "collateral attack on testamentary dispositions." Abel v. Bittner , 470 N.W.2d 348, 351 (Iowa 1991). In the second, a year later, we held that a plaintiff may pursue a tortious interference claim separate from a will contest even when the plaintiff alleges that the defendant used wrongful means to induce the decedent to execute a new will.

Huffey v. Lea , 491 N.W.2d 518, 519–20 (Iowa 1992) (en banc). And in the third, decided last term, we overruled Frohwein and Huffey v. Lea and held that a plaintiff alleging a tortious-interference claim involving a will executed through wrongful means must join the action with a timely will contest. Youngblut v. Youngblut , 945 N.W.2d 25, 37 (Iowa 2020). None of our prior cases analyzed or set forth the elements of a tortious-interference-with-inheritance claim.

Buboltz and Reece contend that courts outside Iowa have not included knowledge of a plaintiff's expectancy of an inheritance as an element of the tort. And while they concede that a knowledge requirement has appeared repeatedly as an element in unpublished tortious-interference-with-inheritance opinions from the Iowa Court of Appeals, they question the ancestral basis for its inclusion. Buboltz and Reece's review of the cases reciting the knowledge element begins with an Iowa Court of Appeals case called Bronner v. Randall , No. 14-0154, 2015 WL 2089360 (Iowa Ct. App. May 6, 2015). In that case, our court of appeals recited five elements of the tort, including one that required the plaintiff to show that the defendants knew of the plaintiff's expectation that he would receive a bequest when the decedent died. Id. at *9.

But Buboltz and Reece contend that the court of appeals was merely reciting the elements from the district court's jury instruction and that the jury instructions were neither contested nor examined for error on appeal. Nonetheless, Buboltz and Reece continue, the court of appeals, in a string of tortious-interference-with-inheritance cases that came later, simply parroted the elements in the jury instruction from Bronner (including the knowledge element) without ever analyzing whether proving knowledge of a plaintiff's expectancy is an element of the tort. See, e.g. , Est. of Kline v. Culp , No. 18-1658, 2019 WL 6358421, at *8 (Iowa Ct. App. Nov. 27, 2019) ; Est. of Arnold v. Arnold , No. 18-1460, 2019 WL 3317381, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. July 24, 2019) ; Cich v. McLeish , No. 18-0069, 2019 WL 1056804, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 6, 2019) ; In re Est. of Boman , No. 16-0110, 2017 WL 512493, at *10 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 8, 2017). With the legal framework for the knowledge element built on such tenuous footing, Buboltz and Reece assert, the district court's reliance on the court of appeals’ recitations of the knowledge element offers no sound basis for its ruling.

When we first recognized intentional interference with inheritance in Frohwein in 1978, volume 4 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which added a new section on "intentional interference with inheritance or gift" had not yet been released. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 774B, at 58 (Am. Law Inst. 1979) [hereinafter Restatement (Second)]. But when we decided Huffey about fourteen years later, we looked to the Restatement (Second) for guidance on remedies for this relatively new and developing tort. Huffey , 491 N.W.2d at 520–21. Buboltz and Reece ask us to return to the Restatement (Second) in analyzing whether the elements of the tort include knowledge of the plaintiff's expectancy. They recite the same description of intentional interference with inheritance from the Restatement (Second) that we quoted in Huffey :

One who by fraud or other tortious means intentionally prevents another from receiving from a third person an inheritance or gift that he would otherwise have received is subject to liability to others for the loss of the inheritance or gift.

Huffey , 491 N.W.2d at 520 (quoting Restatement (Second) § 774B, at 58).

Buboltz and Reece contend that this description conveys that plaintiffs must prove intent but suggests no requirement that plaintiffs prove defendants’ knowledge of another's expectation of a bequest. Buboltz and Reece cite comments...