Woodward v. Lafranca

• Decision Date: 08 July 2016
• Docket Number: No. 20140620–CA,20140620–CA
• Citation: 2016 UT App 141,381 P.3d 1125
• Parties: James Woodward, Appellant, v. Julie Lafranca, Appellee.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

381 P.3d 1125

2016 UT App 141

James Woodward, Appellant,

v.Julie Lafranca, Appellee.

No. 20140620–CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed July 8, 2016

Troy L. Booher, Noella A. Sudbury, Julie J. Nelson, and Sara J. Pfrommer, Attorneys for Appellant.

Brent D. Young and Dallas B. Young, Attorneys for Appellee.

Judge Gregory K. Orme authored this Opinion, in which Judge Stephen L. Roth and Senior Judge Pamela T. Greenwood concurred.¹

Opinion

ORME

, Judge:

¶1 James Woodward (Father) again challenges the trial court's denial of his petition to modify the child custody provisions of the divorce decree between himself and Julie LaFranca (Mother) regarding their child (Child). In his previous appeal, Woodward v. LaFranca , 2013 UT App 147, 305 P.3d 181

, we identified a number of problems with the trial court's decision and reversed and remanded for the trial court to address those shortcomings. Id. ¶ 34. Because we determine that the trial court substantially complied with the mandate of our prior decision, we affirm.

BACKGROUND²

¶2 Father filed for divorce from Mother in July 2006, just before the birth of Child. Id. ¶ 2

. At that time, Father and Mother stipulated to Mother's custody of Child “subject to Father's rights to parent time.” Id. Just over three years later, in August 2009, Mother began making accusations—to the Division of Child and Family Services and to Father's employer—“that Child had been physically and sexually abused during Father's parent time.” Id. ¶ 3. After investigation, however, “[a]ll of Mother's abuse allegations were determined to be unfounded.” Id. Almost a year after the accusations began, in July 2010, Father filed a petition to modify the divorce decree, requesting custody of Child. Id. ¶ 4. That November, a domestic relations commissioner recommended transferring temporary custody of Child to Father on the ground that Mother's “repeated unsubstantiated abuse allegations” themselves constituted severe child abuse. Id. See

id ¶ 5. Following Mother's objections to the transfer of custody to Father, the trial court took up the matter just over a year later. Id. ¶ 5. The trial court heard testimony from Mother and Father as well as from several experts, including a custody evaluator (Evaluator), Child's therapist (Therapist), and a court-appointed Special Master. Id. Although the expert testimony overwhelmingly supported Father, the trial court found that each expert lacked, for one reason or another, credibility or persuasiveness. See id. So the trial court, “relying primarily on Mother's testimony, ... denied Father's petition to modify custody.” Id.

¶3 Thus, somewhat uniquely, the instant case turns on whether judicial discretion extends so far as to permit the trial court to reject the testimony of all the experts that testified before it. Compare Woodward , 2013 UT App 147, ¶ 5, 305 P.3d 181

, with In re G.V. , 916 P.2d 918, 920 (Utah Ct.App.1996)

(per curiam) (upholding a trial court's finding that the State's expert witness's testimony was more credible than that given by the mother's expert witness in a parental rights termination decision). See also

Ouk v. Ouk , 2015 UT App 104, ¶ 14, 348 P.3d 751 (“Clearly, the fact-finder is in the best position to judge the credibility of witnesses and is free to disbelieve their testimony. Even where testimony is uncontroverted, a trial court is free to disregard such testimony if it finds the evidence ... not credible.”) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

¶4 The trial court originally dismissed as incredible the testimony of all the expert witnesses who testified at trial—Therapist, Evaluator, and the court-appointed Special Master—and made a number of factual findings and legal conclusions, almost all of which favored Mother. In Father's original appeal, we held that the trial court failed to adequately explain and justify its rejection of the expert witnesses' testimony and improperly weighed certain of the best interests factors relevant to the determination of custody. See Woodward , 2013 UT App 147, ¶ 34, 305 P.3d 181

. Specifically, we held that the trial court exceeded its discretion when it entirely rejected Evaluator's testimony. See

id. ¶¶ 15 –19.

¶5 We also concluded that minor inconsistencies in Therapist's testimony concerning Mother's state of mind during therapy sessions did “not definitively demonstrate the inaccuracy of the Therapist's [testimony]” and that, accordingly, it was not reasonable to “question[ ] the Therapist's overall credibility” on that basis. Id. ¶ 10

. Furthermore, although we held that the trial court did not exceed its discretion in assigning little weight to the Special Master's testimony, we were “concerned with the fact that the court dismissed the Special Master's concerns as a threshold matter without evaluating those concerns in the context of the best interests factors.” Id. ¶ 20. We noted that the Special Master's testimony “was relevant, in conjunction with the other evidence presented in this case, to the court's overall best interests determination,” and we emphasized that it “should have been analyzed accordingly.” Id.

¶6 We concluded that the trial court also erred in its consideration of the best interests factors because it

• found that the best interests factor of emotional stability weighed in favor of Mother without making any findings as to Father's emotional stability, much less considering “whether Mother was more emotionally stable than Father,” id ¶¶ 27 –28

;

• failed to explain why it rejected Evaluator's opinion as to Child's bond with his stepbrother and apparently considered “the amount of time Child lived with his brother as determinative of their bond,” id. ¶ 29 ;

• concluded, without further explanation, “that Child was more bonded to Mother than to Father because he had been raised primarily by Mother during the early years of his life,” id. ¶ 30 ; and

• improperly focused on whether Mother's interference with Father's visitation was a material change in circumstances instead of “weighing the parents' relative ability to facilitate visitation,” see

id. ¶¶ 32 –33.

Finally, although we concluded that the trial court did not exceed its discretion in finding that Mother did not abuse Child, id. ¶ 25

, we questioned the trial court's conclusion that “[t]his factor does not weigh in favor of [Father]” because it neither made findings nor was there evidence presented at trial that Father had abused Child, id. ¶ 25 n. 9 (alterations in original). We further pointed out that “if the court believed Mother had abused Child, just not severely, ... this factor would actually preponderate in favor of Father.” Id. Therefore, we instructed the trial court to “weigh this factor accordingly” in reconsidering the best interests factors on remand.³

Id.

¶7 On remand, the trial court supplemented its custody order with forty pages of new material, but otherwise reissued most of the same findings, concluding once again that it was in Child's best interest for Mother to have physical and legal custody of Child.⁴ Father again appeals, insisting that the trial court did not follow our mandate on remand and erred in standing by its decision in Mother's favor.

ANALYSIS

¶8 A remand with specific instructions to the trial court necessarily precludes the trial court from considering issues outside the scope of remand, just as it constrains the appellate court, on further appeal following remand, from reconsidering the trial court's decision except as to the resolution of the issues previously identified.⁵ See Brown v. Babbitt , 2015 UT App 291, ¶ 6 n. 5, 364 P.3d 60

(“[U]nder the law of the case doctrine, ‘a decision made on an issue during one stage of a case is binding in successive stages of the same litigation.’ Thus, the doctrine allows a court to decline to revisit issues within the same case once the court has ruled on them.”) (quoting IHC Health Servs., Inc. v. D & K Mgmt., Inc. , 2008 UT 73, ¶ 26, 196 P.3d 588 ); Wasatch County v. Okelberry , 2015 UT App 192, ¶ 30, 357 P.3d 586 (noting that a district court's discretion to reconsider issues “is limited when the case has been appealed and remanded” and that an appellate court is generally bound by its prior decision on the issues “should the case return on appeal after remand”) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, we are now only concerned with—and limit our consideration to—a relatively narrow question: Did the trial court adequately implement our mandate as expressed in the prior opinion?⁶

See supra ¶¶ 4–6.

¶9 “ ‘[W]hen an appellate court makes a pronouncement on a legal issue, [a lower tribunal] must not depart from the mandate.’ ” Blauer v. Career Serv. Review Bd. , 2012 UT App 120, ¶ 14, 276 P.3d 1246

(second alteration in original) (quoting Jensen v. IHC Hosps., Inc. , 2003 UT 51, ¶ 67, 82 P.3d 1076 ). “[T]he lower court must implement both the letter and the spirit of the mandate, taking into account the appellate court's opinion and the circumstances it embraces ... [and it] may not reopen the case to consider other issues or matters not included in the mandate.” Okelberry , 2015 UT App 192, ¶ 32, 357 P.3d 586 (first alteration in original) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

¶10 “Reviewing whether a district court complied with the mandate of an appellate court presents a question of law, which we review for correctness,” Nguyen v. IHC Med. Servs., Inc. , 2012 UT App 288, ¶ 6, 288 P.3d 1084

(citation and internal quotation marks omitted), “granting no deference to the district court,” State v. Nicholls , 2006 UT 76, ¶ 3, 148 P.3d 990. But insofar as the trial court substantially complied with our mandate, we review its factual findings for clear error. Woodward , 2013 UT App 147, ¶ 6, 305 P.3d 181. Furthermore, even if we were to conclude that the trial court had not substantially complied with our mandate, we would nevertheless affirm where it is clear in context that, despite the deviation, a contrary...