Justia Montana Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Burcalow Family, LLC purchased property that sat adjacent to The Corral Bar, Inc. property. Burcalow and The Corral signed a license agreement whereby The Corral agreed to pay Burcalow for the use of Burcalow's property for its drain field and well. After the license agreement expired, Burcalow filed suit against The Corral, alleging claims for trespass and a declaratory judgment. The Corral counterclaimed for, inter alia, prescriptive easement, detrimental reliance, and mistake. The district court (1) determined that The Corral possessed a prescriptive easement over and across Burcalow's property, and (2) rescinded the license agreement, ordering Burcalow to refund the fees The Corral had paid under the license agreement. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) The Corral failed to demonstrate the elements required to establish a prescriptive easement; and (2) Burcalow's counsel did not make fraudulent representations entitling The Corral to rescind the parties' license agreement, and therefore, Burcalow did not have to return The Corral's payments made pursuant to the agreement. Remanded. View "Burcalow Family, LLC v. The Corral Bar, Inc." on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Appellant was convicted of theft and accountability to burglary. The Supreme Court reversed Appellant's conviction for theft and affirmed Appellant's conviction for accountability to burglary, holding (1) the district court did not err by instructing the jury on the theory of accountability when the State had not directly charged an accountability based offense; (2) Appellant's counsel's failure to object to an instruction on accountability that defined "purposely" as a conduct-based mental state rather than a result-based mental state caused no prejudice to Appellant; but (3) Appellant's counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to object to her theft conviction on the grounds that it violated Montana's statutory restriction on multiple charges. Remanded. View "State v. Tellegen" on Justia Law

After a jury trial, Appellant was convicted of the attempted deliberate homicide of her husband, Mike. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the district court did not err when it (1) excluded Appellant's proposed expert witness testimony from two expert witnesses about the behaviors of individuals in abusive relationships and the experts' diagnoses of Appellant with post-traumatic stress disorder; and (2) admitted Mike's alleged prior inconsistent statement to a volunteer firefighter responding to a medical emergency when Mike could not remember making the statement, as the statement was admissible under Mont. R. Evid. 801(d)(a)(A). View "State v. Lotter" on Justia Law

James and Rachel Earl filed an action against Pavex Corporation seeking declarations concerning two overlapping easements that burdened the Earls' land for the benefit of Pavex's land. One of the easements was 100 feet in width and the other thirty feet in width. The Earls asserted (1) the 100-foot-wide easement was unenforceable because it did not appear in the chain of title to the Earls' property, and (2) in the alternative, even if the 100-foot-wide easement was valid, they were not required to remove structures and cropland that encroached upon both easements. The district court concluded (1) the 100-foot-wide easement did not burden the Earls' property, and (2) the Earls may be required to remove the structures and cropland from the easements - if the Supreme Court found the 100-foot-wide easement to be valid - to the extent necessary to effectuate the purposes of the easements. The Supreme Court (1) reversed the district court's conclusion that Pavex's 100-foot-wide easement was extinguished by failure to properly record it; and (2) affirmed the district court's ruling that encroachments must be removed from the two easements to the extent they constituted unreasonable interference with Pavex's easement rights. Remanded. View "Earl v. Pavex" on Justia Law

Teresa and Dee Carestia sued Jeffrey Robey, claiming damages resulting from a car accident. The jury found Jeffrey's negligence was the cause of the accident and that Dee was contributorily negligent. The jury awarded Teresa $872 in medical expenses but awarded nothing for her past and future pain and suffering or loss of capacity to pursue her established course of life. Both parties subsequently filed a bill of costs. The district court allowed the Carestias to recover costs from Jeffrey and Jeffrey to recover costs from the Carestias. Teresa appealed. The Supreme Court reversed in part and affirmed in part, holding (1) a portion of the jury's damage award was not supported by substantial credible evidence, as Teresa was entitled to some award of damages for her past pain and suffering proven in this case; and (2) the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied the Carestias' objection to Jeffrey's bill of costs. Remanded. View "Carestia v. Robey" on Justia Law

The Lincoln County Commissioners created the Bull Lake Rural Fire District and appointed a Board of Trustees to govern the District. The District and County later disputed the permissible scope of the District's services and the circumstances under which the District could be dispatched. The district court granted summary judgment to the County, holding (1) the County delegated to the District only the authority to provide limited firefighting services, and only the County could authorize the District to expand the scope of its services; and (2) the District was only entitled to receive notice of emergencies in its geographical area, and Troy Dispatch had the discretion whether to dispatch the District to respond to any particular emergency. The Supreme Court reversed, holding (1) the District's Trustees and the fire chief determined the scope of the District's services under Montana law, and the District was not required to seek prior approval of the County before providing any of those emergency services; and (2) the District was entitled to be notified of a request for service in its geographical area, and Troy Dispatch had the responsibility to determine how to provide the notification and which emergency service provider to dispatch in each instance. View "Bull Lake Fire Dist. v. Lincoln County" on Justia Law

In Brown I, the Supreme Court held that the district court properly found that Defendants had a prescriptive easement to cross Plaintiff's land that included residential and recreational uses but improperly limited the width of the easement to twenty feet for the purposes of trailing cattle. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the district court to clarify the scope of recreational and residential uses authorized by the easement and to modify its order regarding the easement's width. After the case was remanded, Plaintiff appealed. The Supreme Court once more remanded the matter to the district court to modify its order to better define the character and frequency of the recreational and residential use, holding that the district court erred by failing to delineate the scope of Defendants' residential and recreational prescriptive easements across Plaintiff's real property. View "Brown & Brown of Mont., Inc. v. Raty" on Justia Law

Five City employees were disciplined by the City for accessing pornography on their government computers. The local newspaper requested access to documents detailing the investigation of the misconduct and the employees' punishment. The City disclosed some documents, refused to release the disciplinary corrective action forms, and redacted all information that could be used to identify the disciplined employees or uninvolved third parties. The newspaper filed a petition for declaratory relief and writ of mandamus. The district court ordered that the City release copies of the investigative documents and disciplinary forms without redactions. The Supreme Court reversed, holding that the district court erred by ordering that identifying information for the five City employees be released to the newspaper, as the employees' reasonable expectation of privacy in their identities with regards to internal disciplinary proceedings clearly outweighed the limited merits of public disclosure. View "Billings Gazette v. City of Billings" on Justia Law

Appellant was convicted of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs and sentenced to a ten-year term of incarceration. On appeal, Appellant argued that insufficient evidence supported his conviction because the State did not produce sufficient evidence at trial that the substance given to a third party was marijuana, a dangerous drug. The State responded that although the substance was not tested, the third party's testimony and the fact that Appellant had a medical marijuana card were sufficient to prove that the substance was marijuana. The Supreme Court reversed Appellant's conviction, holding that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to allow a rational trier of fact to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the substance in question was a dangerous drug. View "State v. Burwell" on Justia Law

Plaintiffs were covered by the State's employee healthcare benefit program established under Title 2, chapter 18, MCA ("the Plan"). Both Plaintiffs were injured in separate automobile accidents. All of the medical bills of both plaintiffs were paid by either the Plan or by third-party insurers. In both cases, medical care providers returned a claim payment to the Plan because the claim had been paid by other insurers. Plaintiffs asserted that the Plan should not have retained the payments returned by the medical providers but should have paid those amounts to Plaintiffs unless they had been made whole or fully compensated for all losses they incurred as a result of the automobile accidents. The district court concluded that the State's operation of the Plan was subject to the "made-whole" provisions Title 2, and thus, no insurer had a right to subrogation unless the insured was made whole for all losses. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the made-whole requirement of Mont. Code Ann. 2-18-902(4) applied to the Plan insofar as it had withheld payments or had retained payments returned by a healthcare provider because the medical expenses had been paid by a third party. View "Diaz v. State" on Justia Law