Shipman v. Evans
| Decision Date | 28 May 2004 |
| Docket Number | No. 20020103.,20020103. |
| Citation | 100 P.3d 1151,2004 UT 44 |
| Parties | Robert C. SHIPMAN; Kathleen M. Rollman; Dale Sweat, individually and for and on behalf of West Jordan City, Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Donna EVANS, Mayor of West Jordan City, Donna Evans, an individual; Andrew Allison, West Jordan City Council Member, Andrew Allison, an individual; Lyle Summers, West Jordan City Council Member, Lyle Summers, an individual; Carolyn Nelson, West Jordan City Council Member, Carolyn Nelson, an individual, Defendants and Appellees. |
| Court | Utah Supreme Court |
Kenneth R. Ivory, South Jordan, for plaintiffs.
W. Cullen Battle, J. David Pearce, Salt Lake City, for defendants.
¶ 1 Plaintiffs Robert C. Shipman, Kathleen M. Rollman, and Dale Sweat appeal rulings of the trial court dismissing their challenge to the legality of actions contemplated by certain West Jordan officials and denying plaintiffs their attorney fees. We affirm.
¶ 2 This appeal is the byproduct of a contentious episode in the civic history of West Jordan City, Utah. The relevant facts span the political and judicial realms and do not lend themselves to summary recitation. The complexity of the events and elevated passions of the participants1 have combined to obscure both the formulation and presentation of legal issues that we take up in this appeal.
¶ 3 The West Jordan City Council considered selling property known as the Sugar Factory property for proposed residential and commercial development. The property is located adjacent to the West Jordan Main City Park. The city council organized a Design Assistance Team ("DAT") to provide ideas and recommendations for the Sugar Factory property. The DAT prepared a plan to sell the property to a commercial developer.
¶ 4 The DAT Plan aroused controversy. The city council responded to the controversy by inviting concerned citizens to formulate their own plans. Plaintiffs, principals in the Committee for Parks & Recreation [Parks & Rec], accepted the invitation and developed a competing plan. Both the DAT Plan and the Parks & Rec Plan were presented to the West Jordan Planning Commission. Although the planning commission recommended the Parks & Rec Plan, the city council preferred the DAT Plan. Because the DAT Plan was incompatible with the city's General Plan,2 a split city council amended the General Plan to accommodate the development of the DAT Plan, after incorporating a few minor suggestions from the Parks & Rec Plan ("Amended Plan").
¶ 5 Plaintiffs were not satisfied with this decision and sought judicial review of the Amended Plan, naming as defendants West Jordan's mayor and four members of its city council, all of whom had voted for the Amended Plan. Plaintiffs claimed that defendants failed to follow city ordinances in adopting the plan and that the Amended Plan itself did not comply with city ordinances. Plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief, the removal of defendants from office, and an award of attorney fees under a private attorney general theory.
¶ 6 The trial court held a hearing on plaintiffs' application for a temporary restraining order in May 2001. At the hearing, the parties presented the court with a stipulation in which defendants agreed to provide plaintiffs with forty-five days' notice before taking any action on the property. Finding insufficient evidence of irreparable harm, the trial court denied plaintiffs' motion. Due to the inability of counsel to agree on the form of an order reflecting the court's ruling, no order was entered until October 3, 2001. This order included the parties' earlier stipulation and an interlineated provision in which defendants promised that they would "not award any contract for actions pursuant to the [request for proposal] regarding the Sugar Factory Property."3
¶ 7 In August 2001, after the May hearing on plaintiffs' motion for a temporary restraining order, but before the order was entered denying it, the city council awarded a consulting contract to French and Associates to design a master plan for the Sugar Factory property based on the Amended Plan. The contract was later abandoned before substantial services were provided or any city funds were expended.
¶ 8 Believing that the contract with French violated the stipulation, plaintiffs renewed their request for injunctive relief. By then, defendants moved to dismiss plaintiffs' substantive claims. The trial court issued a written minute entry and decision denying plaintiffs' renewed motion, granting defendants' motion, and dismissing plaintiffs' claim for attorney fees as private attorneys general. In addition, finding that "there is some basis to believe that defendants may have taken action in violation of the Stipulation entered in open court," the trial court issued, "on its own motion," an order to show cause why defendants should not be held in contempt for the apparent violation.
¶ 9 With this ruling, entered by the trial court on October 22, 2001, only the issue of contempt remained as residue of the lawsuit. Plaintiffs promptly altered this state of affairs by filing a motion to reconsider the court's order and again asking for attorney fees.
¶ 10 In late November 2001, the trial court conducted a hearing on its order to show cause and on plaintiffs' motion to reconsider. On December 20, 2001, the trial court entered a written ruling striking its own order to show cause. The trial court determined that its order to show cause was an action for criminal contempt requiring a showing of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The court concluded that the evidence did not meet this standard and, accordingly, did not find defendants guilty of criminal contempt. The trial court also denied plaintiffs' motion to reconsider and explained the grounds for denying plaintiffs an award of attorney fees.
¶ 11 Following this decision, plaintiffs renewed their motion to reconsider and included a request to pursue discovery. In January 2002, the trial court denied this motion.
¶ 12 While the parties jousted in the courtroom, opponents of the Amended Plan were collecting signatures necessary to place an initiative blocking the Amended Plan before the voters in November 2001. The initiative required voter approval of any sale, lease, or transfer of city property, including the Sugar Factory property.
¶ 13 The initiative signature drive succeeded, the voters approved it, and the Amended Plan was nullified. Notwithstanding the enactment of the initiative into law, the city council voted to repeal the Amended Plan, specifically stating that "[r]epealing this action will obviate the need for further litigation about this issue by rendering it moot."
¶ 14 The plaintiffs appeal six4 issues: (1) whether the trial court erroneously dismissed, sua sponte, plaintiffs' claim for attorney fees; (2) whether the trial court erred in denying attorney fees to plaintiffs under the private attorney general doctrine; (3) whether the trial court erred in dismissing plaintiffs' claim for declaratory relief; (4) whether the trial court denied plaintiffs due process of law by dismissing their case without motion, notice, or adequate opportunity to be heard; (5) whether the trial court erred in considering only criminal contempt, and not civil contempt, as a penalty when defendants violated the stipulation; and (6) whether the trial court erred in failing to enter adequate findings of fact and conclusions of law. In our analysis we combine the first two issues and address the remaining issues in turn.
¶ 15 Plaintiffs raise two issues concerning attorney fees: one procedural, the other substantive. Plaintiffs first challenge the manner in which the trial court dismissed their claim for attorney fees, arguing that it dismissed the claim sua sponte without affording plaintiffs the opportunity to be heard. Next, plaintiffs assert that the trial court erred in rejecting on the merits their claim for private attorney general fees.
¶ 16 We first consider the argument that the trial court erred in the manner in which it considered and dismissed the private attorney general claim. Plaintiffs characterize the trial court's dismissal as "sua sponte." The trial court first dismissed plaintiffs' private attorney general claim in its October 22, 2001, ruling on defendants' motion to dismiss. The motion to dismiss did not expressly seek dismissal of the private attorney general claim. It is nevertheless understandable why the trial court would reach the issue: it had dismissed all of plaintiffs' substantive claims and denied plaintiffs injunctive relief. There was therefore no apparent basis to support an attorney fees award.
¶ 17 Plaintiffs contend, however, that the trial court's dismissal of their private attorney general fee claim was premature, occurring while injunctive relief remained available and before plaintiffs had a full opportunity to reap the extra-judicial benefits of their lawsuit, in particular, the city council's rescission of the Amended Plan.
¶ 18 Plaintiffs' first motion to reconsider raised this point, insisting that the trial court improperly denied plaintiffs a hearing. The trial court accepted plaintiffs' invitation to reconsider its dismissal of their attorney fees claim.5 At the outset of the November 2001 hearing, the trial court announced that it was taking up plaintiffs' motion to reconsider. Despite this express placement of the motion to reconsider on the hearing agenda, counsel for neither party addressed it, instead limiting their remarks to the order to show cause which was also heard that day.
¶ 19 At the conclusion of the hearing, the trial court denied plaintiffs' request to reconsider its dismissal of the private attorney general claim. The hearing adjourned without plaintiffs' counsel voicing either a desire to be heard on the issue or an objection to the court's consideration of...
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