NMSC Reiterates Summary Judgment Standard for Defendants

In an unusual three-Justice opinion, the New Mexico Supreme Court addressed a topic we all know and love: summary judgment. In Ridlington v. Contreras, the Court reiterated a long-standing but often neglected standard: when the movant is the defendant, the burden is to negate an element of the plaintiff’s claims. Because the defendant in this case had failed to do so, the district court’s decision granting summary judgment and dismissing the plaintiff’s claims was error.

Background

In this case, a father deed some 1900 acres of land to his son. A year later, his daughter filed suit to void the deeds, alleging in part that they were obtained through undue influence. Son filed a motion for summary judgment, relying on the presumption that a duly executed conveyance is valid and arguing that Daughter’s claim of undue influence therefore should be dismissed. Daughter’s response focused on standing issues and did not attach evidence to rebut the presumption that the conveyance was valid. After the district court granted Son’s motion, Daughter filed a motion to reconsider, arguing that there were issues of fact related to the elements of undue influence. The court denied the motion. The Court of Appeals, over a dissent from Judge Duffy, affirmed.

Summary judgment is a procedure used to decide issues prior to trial. It is appropriate when there are no disputed issues of material fact. A fact is material when it matters to the analysis. If the material facts are in dispute, summary judgment is inappropriate, and the facts must be decided at trial. But if the parties agree as to the facts, the court can apply the law to those facts and grant or deny summary judgment. In New Mexico, summary judgment is disfavored, and our cases show a marked preference for trial on the merits.

Dueling Presumptions

The summary judgment procedures requires two decisions. First, the court must determine whether there are any disputed issues of material fact. If so, summary judgment is not appropriate. Second, if the facts are not disputed, the court must apply the substantive law to the facts to arrive at a decision. But the two are related: which facts are material depends on what law is at issue.

Here, Son sought to defeat Daughter’s undue influence claim. The underlying theory of the doctrine of undue influence is that the donor is induced by various means to execute an instrument that, in reality, is the will of another substituted for that of the donor. Here, in other words, Daughter need to show that Son’s will was substituted for that of Father. Daughter was entitled to a presumption of undue influence if she could show that (1) there was a confidential or fiduciary relationship between Son and Father and (2) there are “suspicions circumstances” (there is a six-factor test for this). The Court, looking at the entire record, found that the Daughter had established that presumption.

Daughter, however, was not the party seeking summary judgment. When the movant seeks dismissal, the standard is slightly different. While Daughter’s burden would have been to make a prima facie case that there was undue influence, Son’s burden was to negate at least one required element of Daughter’s undue influence claim. This makes sense: since Son wants the claim dismissed without a trial, he must show that on the undisputed facts, Daughter cannot prevail.

Son, like Daughter, had relied on a presumption. Specifically, the only relevant evidence he provided was the deeds themselves. He relied on a presumption that, absent evidence to the contrary, those deeds were valid. Against this was the presumption, enjoyed by Daughter, that there was undue influence (and therefore the deeds were not valid). How would the Court resolve the tension between these two presumptions?

As it turns out, there was no need to determine which presumption should win. As the Court noted (and as Judge Duffy had reasoned in dissent below), “the presumption of the facial validity of the deeds within Son’s motion for summary judgment does not negate or even address any of the elements of undue influence.” In other words, the validity of the deeds had nothing to do with whether there was a special relationship or suspicious circumstances. The validity of the deeds simply was not material, and therefore could not negate Daughter’s claim. And because the Son could not negate the undue influence claim, he was not entitled to have that claim dismissed.

It is good to have another case teasing out the difference between summary judgment motions filed by plaintiffs and those filed by defendants. Though the law is well settled–nothing in this case is new–it does not seem to come up frequently. Hopefully this case will join Blauwkamp on practitioners’ and courts’ frequently cited lists.

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