Valerio v. San Mateo Enters., Inc.

• Decision Date: 24 April 2017
• Docket Number: NO. 34,576,34,576
• Parties: Arturo VALERIO, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SAN MATEO ENTERPRISES, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeals of New Mexico

400 P.3d 275

Arturo VALERIO, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.SAN MATEO ENTERPRISES, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

NO. 34,576

Court of Appeals of New Mexico.

Filing Date: April 24, 2017

Frederick H. Sherman, Deming, NM, for Appellant.

Holt Mynatt Martìnez P.C., Casey B. Fitch, Las Cruces, NM, for Appellee.

OPINION

LINDA M. VANZI, Chief Judge

{1} Plaintiff Arturo Valerio appeals from the district court's final order dismissing his complaint pursuant to Rule 1-041(B) NMRA. Valerio raises six issues on appeal: (1) whether the district court erred in denying his motion to withdraw an admission he made in discovery; (2) whether the district court erred in denying joinder of real parties in interest and therefore lacked jurisdiction over the matter; (3) whether the district court erred in granting partial summary judgment on three of Valerio's claims; (4) whether the district court erred by dismissing claims not raised in Defendant San Mateo Enterprises, Inc.'s (San Mateo) motion for summary judgment; (5) whether the district court erred in excluding certain evidence during trial; and (6) whether the district court erred in not modifying the scheduling order so as to permit Valerio to amend his complaint. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

{2} This lawsuit stems from the parties' 2012 contract for the purchase and sale of one million pounds of dehydrated chile peppers. Valerio grows and harvests chile peppers. San Mateo is a dehydration chile plant that purchases, processes, and dehydrates different varieties of chile. Pursuant to the parties' contract and practice, Valerio would deliver raw chile peppers to San Mateo, which would then wash, dehydrate, weigh, and pay for them.

{3} It is San Mateo's practice to issue truck tickets to every incoming load of chile. The ticket records the "name of the grower, type of chile, the number of full boxes received, and empty boxes sent to the grower." San Mateo provides each grower with specialized empty boxes for the transportation of the chile peppers, which it tracks on paperwork titled "In/Out Log." The In/Out Log records "the ticket numbers and dates of deliveries received by [the] drivers, the number of empty boxes sent with the drivers, number of full boxes received ..., and the type of [chile] peppers delivered." After processing and dehydration, San Mateo provides the grower an estimated per-box dehydrated weight for prior deliveries. This latter weight is an estimate provided as a courtesy to help growers track picking costs. Because the cost of transportation is borne by each grower, it is in the grower's financial interest to transport the chile peppers contracted for in as few trips as possible.

{4} According to Valerio, he was told that the weights listed on the In/Out Logs after the chile peppers were dehydrated were accurate, rather than merely estimates as claimed by San Mateo. In 2012 Valerio provided chile seeds to farmers to grow the chile peppers; he then returned at harvest time to pick, transport, and deliver the chile. Throughout the 2012 picking season, Valerio made periodic payments to the farmers based on the weights indicated on the In/Out Logs. Valerio contends that San Mateo knew that he was relying on these weights in order to pay his debts to the farmers.

{5} San Mateo's records reflect that, prior to the beginning of the 2012 season, Valerio received advance payments totaling $90,250. Valerio did not dispute below that he received these advance payments. San Mateo's records further reflect that these advance payments were subtracted from the last payment it made to Valerio on December 26, 2012, reducing that payment in half.

{6} Toward the end of the 2012 season, Valerio's harvest ran out and he started purchasing chile peppers grown and picked by other farmers. Those chile peppers were delivered to Valerio in sacks at a weigh station in Mexico, where he was able to obtain weight slips indicating their raw weight. The weighing process was as follows: a truck would be weighed with San Mateo's empty boxes already on it, the truck would then drive off the scale, the boxes on it would be filled with chile peppers delivered to the weigh station by the farmers who grew and picked them, and the truck would then be weighed again.

{7} The Mexican weight tickets were the only records of raw weight for any of the chile peppers Valerio delivered to San Mateo. Valerio did not weigh any of his own harvest because the chile peppers were loaded onto the trucks in the fields and into empty boxes as they were picked. San Mateo also did not weigh any of the raw chile peppers it received because payment was to be determined based on dehydrated weights only. The parties disagreed as to whether or not dehydrated weight can be determined from raw weight.

{8} Also toward the end of the 2012 season, San Mateo stopped providing Valerio with weights on the In/Out Logs. Valerio asserts that he called San Mateo because he needed this information in order to pay some of his farmers and that he told San Mateo the boxes were averaging over 200 pounds each. When he received the last payment, Valerio's bookkeeper—who was unaware of the advance payments—calculated that the amount paid actually translated to an average of 81 pounds per box instead of 200 pounds per box. This lawsuit resulted from that discrepancy.

{9} Valerio's complaint alleged debt and money due, breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, fraud, and unconscionable trade practices. Valerio voluntarily dismissed the unconscionable trade practices claim. The district court subsequently granted San Mateo's motion for summary judgment on all but the breach of contract claim, which was tried to the bench in October 2014. At the conclusion of Valerio's case, San Mateo moved for judgment on the merits pursuant to Rule 1-041(B). The district court granted San Mateo's motion, finding that Valerio did not admit any contract into evidence or otherwise establish the elements of an enforceable agreement, and that he had not shown any evidence of damages entitling him to relief. This appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

{10} As a preliminary matter, San Mateo argues that Valerio waived appellate review of any and all issues in this case because Valerio does not challenge the district court's dismissal of his complaint under Rule 1-041(B). Rule 1-041(B) provides, in relevant part, as follows:

After the plaintiff, in an action tried by the court without a jury, has completed the presentation of evidence, the defendant, without waiving the right to offer evidence in the event the motion is not granted, may move for a dismissal on the ground that upon the facts and the law the plaintiff has shown no right to relief. The court as trier of the facts may then determine them and render judgment against the plaintiff or may decline to render any judgment until the close of all the evidence. If the court renders judgment on the merits against the plaintiff, the court shall make findings as provided in Rule 1-052 NMRA.

{11} At the close of Valerio's case in chief, San Mateo moved for dismissal and the motion was granted. San Mateo now asserts that waiver occurred because "[n]owhere in his brief does Valerio seek review of the [d]istrict [c]ourt's final ruling dismissing the case with prejudice under Rule 1-041 [.]"

{12} San Mateo misunderstands the role that reversible error plays in our appellate review process. A party is not required to challenge the merits of the lower court's ultimate decision for this Court to address alleged reversible errors along the way; if this Court finds that reversible error occurred at any point, we will set aside the judgment. See Anderson v. Welsh , 1974-NMCA-120, ¶ 28, 86 N.M. 767, 527 P.2d 1079("All error is not reversible. Reversible error occurs where the substantial rights of the adverse party have been affected. Otherwise no judgment shall be reversed by reason of such error." (citation omitted)). Here, Valerio asserts that, leading up to and during the trial, the district court committed various reversible errors as stated above. Under these circumstances, with regard to the district court's dismissal of the action, our rules of appellate procedure merely require that the brief in chief include "a precise statement of the relief sought[,]" which it does. Rule 12-213(A)(5) NMRA (current version at Rule 12-318(A)(5) NMRA ). Consequently, we proceed to address the issues raised by Valerio on appeal.

Motion to Withdraw Admission

{13} Valerio's first argument on appeal is that the district court erred in denying his motion to withdraw an admission he made in response to a written discovery request. Specifically, San Mateo's request for admission number two asked Valerio to either admit or deny whether "all payments from San Mateo ... to ... Valerio in the year 2012 accurately reflect the amounts owed to ... Valerio based upon the weight of the chile delivered after dehydration with 3%- 7% moisture." Valerio responded to this request for admission by placing an "X" next to the option for "Admit" and further stating that "[t]he last payment failed to account for approximately 14 loads of chile that ... Valerio delivered." More than a year later and after the close of discovery, Valerio filed a motion seeking the court's permission to withdraw this admission as "improvident" and to allow an amended "truthful response" to the request. In particular, Valerio sought to withdraw the admission "in order to allow [Valerio] to prove that [San Mateo had] not accounted for the chile purchased and [had] underpaid [Valerio.]" In other words, Valerio sought to change his admission from the 14 loads to challenging the amount paid for the full one million pounds of chile peppers that the parties had contracted for. After a hearing, the district court denied Valerio's motion. At trial, the district court accepted the original admission as established and limited Valerio's claim to the 14 loads of chile alleged in the admission not to...