Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

In this juvenile dependency proceeding, a father was found by the court to have subjected one of his children to sexual abuse. Although the child was unavailable to testify at the proceedings, the juvenile court admitted into evidence child's out-of-court statements. Father contended that the juvenile court's theory for admitting the statements - that they were the statements of a party-opponent and, therefore, not hearsay -was a fundamental misunderstanding of the evidence rule pertaining to statements of party-opponents. Furthermore, Father argued that the court's admission of child's out-of-court statements under OEC 801(4)(b)(A) violated his (father's) right to due process and to a proceeding that was fundamentally fair. Upon review, the Supreme Court agreed with father that the juvenile court erred in admitting the child's statements under OEC 801(4)(b)(A), and concluded that the error was not harmless. Accordingly, the Court reversed the juvenile court's judgments and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Dept. of Human Services v. G. D. W." on Justia Law

In his criminal case, defendant unsuccessfully sought an order compelling the victim to produce the hard drive of her laptop computer so that the defense could obtain a forensic examination of the hard drive. After his conviction, defendant requested that the trial court order that an already-existing copy of the hard drive, preserved in a related civil case, be placed under seal in the trial court record of defendant's criminal case, for purposes of appellate review. The trial court granted that motion and rejected the victim's claim that the order violated her right as a crime victim under Article I, section 42, of the Oregon Constitution to refuse a discovery request. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the trial court's order did not violate the victim's rights under Article I, section 42. Accordingly, the Court affirmed. View "Oregon v. Bray" on Justia Law

The issue on appeal before the Supreme Court in this case was whether a local church or the national church from which it sought to separate owned certain church property. Hope Presbyterian Church of Rogue River (Hope Presbyterian) had been affiliated with the national Presbyterian Church organization since its founding in 1901, most recently affiliating with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA), and its regional presbytery, the Presbytery of the Cascades. In 2007, the congregation voted to disaffiliate from PCUSA. The corporation then initiated this lawsuit, seeking to quiet title to certain church property and to obtain a declaration that PCUSA and the Presbytery of the Cascades had no claim or interest in any of the real and personal property in Hope Presbyterian's possession. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the trial court quieted title in favor of Hope Presbyterian and declared that PCUSA and the Presbytery of the Cascades had no beneficial interest in any of Hope Presbyterian's property. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that Hope Presbyterian held the property in trust for PCUSA. Upon review, the Supreme Court agreed with the appellate court and affirmed its decision. View "Hope Presbyerian v. Presbyterian Church" on Justia Law

In two criminal cases consolidated for purposes of opinion, each defendant's conviction was based, for the most part, on eyewitness identification evidence. In "Oregon v. Lawson," the Court of Appeals concluded that, despite the state's use of unduly suggestive pretrial identification procedures, under the test first articulated by the Supreme Court in "Oregon v. Classen," (590 P2d 1198 (1979)), the victim's identification of defendant Lawson had been reliable enough to allow the jury to consider it in its deliberations. In "Oregon v. James," (again relying on "Classen") the Court of Appeals similarly concluded that, although the witnesses had been subject to an unduly suggestive police procedure in the course of identifying defendant James, those identifications had nevertheless been sufficiently reliable, and were therefore admissible at trial. The Supreme Court allowed review in each of these cases to determine whether the Classen test was consistent with the current scientific research and understanding of eyewitness identification. In light of the scientific research, the Court revised the test set out in Classen and adopted several additional procedures, based generally on applicable provisions of the Oregon Evidence Code (OEC), for determining the admissibility of eyewitness identification evidence. View "Oregon v. Lawson" on Justia Law

The issue before the Supreme Court in this case was whether a physician's conclusion that defendant physically abused a child met the requirements for admissibility of scientific evidence. The child in this case, C, was approximately 18 months old when he arrived at the emergency room with multiple injuries, including a golf-ball-sized lump on his forehead and a fractured skull. The state accused defendant of causing C's injuries and charged him with two counts of criminal mistreatment and first- and third-degree assault. To prove first-degree assault, the state had to show that defendant had caused C "serious physical injury," defined as injury that "creates a substantial risk of death." The jury convicted defendant of third-degree assault and two counts of criminal mistreatment. The jury acquitted defendant on the charge of first-degree assault, but found him guilty of the lesser-included offense of second-degree assault. Like first-degree assault, second degree assault requires a finding that the inflicted injury created a substantial risk of death. Upon review of the trial court record, the Supreme Court concluded that the expert's diagnosis was not limited to determining the cause of C's injuries, but included a conclusion that C's injuries were the result of child abuse. That aspect of the expert's diagnosis addressed a second disputed issue, whether defendant's actions were intentional or accidental. Because the Court could not conclude that there was little likelihood that the admission of the expert's diagnosis did not affect all of defendant's convictions, the Court also could not conclude that the trial court's error was harmless as to the convictions for first degree mistreatment and third-degree assault. The decision of the Court of Appeals was therefore reversed, and the case remanded to the trial court for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Sanchez-Alfonso" on Justia Law

This case concerned an employment discrimination dispute between Portland State University (PSU) and Portland State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (the Association). Those entities entered into a collective bargaining agreement that included a dispute resolution process for alleged violations of the agreement. That dispute resolution process included a "Resort to Other Procedures" (ROP) provision that permitted PSU to decline or discontinue a grievance proceeding if an Association member brought a claim regarding the same matter in an agency or court outside of PSU. PSU invoked that provision to halt a grievance proceeding after an Association member filed discrimination complaints with two outside agencies. The Association subsequently filed a complaint with the Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB), alleging in part that PSU had engaged in an unfair labor practice by discontinuing the contractual grievance proceeding. ERB concluded that PSU's invocation of the ROP clause constituted unlawful discrimination. It therefore declined to enforce the ROP clause and ordered PSU to submit to the grievance process. On PSU's appeal, the Court of Appeals determined that ERB erred by applying the wrong legal standard in ordering PSU to submit to the grievance process, and it therefore reversed and remanded the case for ERB's reconsideration. The Association sought review of that decision. Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals's decision, concluding that ERB correctly held that the ROP clause at issue in this case imposed a form of employer retaliation for protected conduct that reasonably would impede or deter an employee from pursuing his or her statutory rights. "The resulting harm is neither theoretical nor trivial, but qualifies as a substantive difference in treatment. The ROP provision is therefore facially discriminatory . . . Accordingly, ERB properly declined to enforce that illegal contract provision. " View "Portland St. Univ. Ass'n of Univ. Professors v. Portland St. Univ." on Justia Law

At issue in this case was the lawfulness of a portion of the City of Portland's Willamette River Greenway Plan that regulates uses of industrial and other urban land along a portion of the Willamette River known as the "North Reach." Specifically, the issue was whether the City of Portland (city) had authority to regulate development within the North Reach. Petitioners represented various industrial interests within the affected area of the city's plan. They contended that the law permitted the city to regulate only "intensification" or "changes" to existing uses and otherwise does not permit the regulation of existing industrial or other urban uses or other changes to such uses within the North Reach. The Land Use Board of Appeals rejected that argument, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Upon review, the Supreme Court likewise rejected petitioners' argument and affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. View "Gunderson, LLC v. City of Portland" on Justia Law

Defendant petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision in "Oregon v. Leistiko," (282 P3d 857 (2012)). He argued that the Court erred in two respects: (1) in stating that he had not pursued two issues on review that he had raised in the Court of Appeals; (2) in not deciding whether the admission of evidence of an uncharged rape affected the jury's determination that he had committed crimes other than rape. The Court allowed the petition and after review of defendant's contentions of error, modified the original opinion. View "Oregon v. Leistiko" on Justia Law

The issue before the Supreme Court in this case centered on the legal standard for the mental state of criminal negligence and, when tested by that standard, whether the record in this case was sufficient to support defendant's conviction of criminally negligent homicide. Defendant, while driving a tractor-trailer truck, collided with the victim's catering truck from the rear. The collision pushed the victim's truck into the oncoming lane of traffic where it was struck by a logging truck. The victim died at the scene. The state charged defendant with criminally negligent homicide. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress evidence of the manner in which he had been driving 10 to 15 minutes before the collision. The trial court denied the motion. Defendant then waived his right to a jury and proceeded with a bench trial. At the close of the state's case, defendant moved for a judgment of acquittal, which the court denied. The trial court subsequently convicted defendant. Defendant appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. Finding no error in the trial court's interpretation of the standard for criminal negligence, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "Oregon v. Lewis" on Justia Law

In this case, the Supreme Court reviewed a trial court's orders declaring defendant's son, "Z" (a 19-year-old man who suffers from autism and developmental disabilities) not competent to testify at trial and excluding from evidence a video involving out-of-court statements made by Z and drawings made by Z. Z was called to testify at Defendant's aggravated murder trial accused of killing Z's caregiver William Mills. Finding that the State bore the burden to preserve alternative arguments supporting the admissibility of any part of evidence given by Z, and the State did not meet this burden at trial, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's decision to exclude all of the evidence in question here. Furthermore, the Court determined that the decision not to admit the video testimony was not an abuse of the trial court's discretion. The Court affirmed both of the trial court's orders. View "Oregon v. Sarich" on Justia Law