Justia Oregon Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Plaintiff was injured in an automobile accident and filed a claim for underinsured motorist (UIM) benefits with defendant Country Preferred Insurance. The insurer submitted a letter that satisfied the attorney fee safe harbor requirements of ORS 742.061(3). The case was arbitrated, and plaintiff prevailed and was awarded attorney fees. Defendant filed exceptions to the fee award in the circuit court, and the court concluded that defendant’s safe harbor letter precluded the award of fees. Plaintiff appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that defendant was ineligible for the protection of the attorney fee safe harbor because, in arbitration, in its answer to plaintiff’s complaint, defendant had raised issues in addition to the liability of the underinsured motorist and the damages due to plaintiff. On review, the Oregon Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeals that defendant was not entitled to the protection of ORS 742.061(3), and affirmed the award of reasonable attorney fees. View "Kiryuta v. Country Preferred Ins. Co." on Justia Law

Petitioners were a group of miners who operated small suction dredges in Oregon waterways. They challenged the lawfulness of an order of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) adopting a general five-year permit that regulated that type of mining. By the time the challenge reached the Court of Appeals, however, the permit had expired. The agency then moved to dismiss petitioners’ challenge on mootness grounds. The Court of Appeals agreed and dismissed. Petitioners sought review of the dismissal arguing that their case was not moot, or in the alternative, their challenge nevertheless was justiciable under ORS 14.175 because it is the sort of action that is capable of repetition and likely to evade judicial review. The Oregon Supreme Court concluded that the petitioners’ challenge to the now-expired permit was moot. But the Court agreed with petitioners that it was justiciable under ORS 14.175. The Court therefore reversed the decision of the Court of Appeals and remanded for further proceedings. View "Eastern Oregon Mining Association v. Dept. of Env. Quality" on Justia Law

The Oregon Tax Court set aside a determination by the Department of Revenue (the department) that taxpayer DIRECTV’s property in Oregon was subject to central assessment under ORS 308.505 to 308.665. The department argued that, contrary to the Tax Court’s opinion, DIRECTV was a “communications” business whose property is subject to central assessment under ORS 308.515(1). The Supreme Court agreed and, therefore, reversed and remanded. View "DIRECTV, Inc. v. Dept. of Rev." on Justia Law

Oakmont LLC owned an apartment complex built in 1996. Oakmont appealed the assessed value for the 2009-10 tax year for that complex on the ground that structural damages resulting from construction defects had substantially reduced the property’s value. In 2011, the county assessor and Oakmont agreed to reduce the assessed value of the complex from over $21 million to $8.5 million for the 2009-10 tax year. Because the time for appealing the valuation for the 2008-09 tax year had passed, the taxpayer asked the Department of Revenue to exercise its supervisory jurisdiction to correct a “likely error” in the 2008-09 assessment. The department concluded that it had no jurisdiction to consider Oakmont’s request, and the Tax Court reversed. Both the county and the department appealed. After review, the Oregon Supreme Court found the Tax Court correctly held that the department had supervisory jurisdiction over Oakmont’s petition to reduce the assessed value of the property for the 2008-09 tax year. Oakmont had no remaining statutory right of appeal, and the parties to the petition agreed to facts indicating a likely error on the tax rolls. It follows that the department had supervisory jurisdiction to consider whether there was in fact an error on the tax rolls and whether, if there was, the department should exercise its discretion to correct any error. The department did not reach those issues, and the Supreme Court agreed with the Tax Court that the case should have been remanded to the department to consider those issues in the first instance. View "Oakmont, LLC v. Dept. of Rev." on Justia Law

Defendant Rasool Islam Islam shoplifted 15 pairs of jeans from a Macy’s retail department store and was convicted of one count of theft in the second degree. The prosecutor sought restitution for Macy’s economic damages based on the retail price of the jeans at the time and place of the theft. Defendant argued that restitution instead should have been based on the value of the jeans on the wholesale market, and any lost profits that Macy’s could prove resulted from the theft. The trial court granted restitution based on the retail value of the jeans, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. After review, the Supreme Court concluded that a retail seller of goods that have been stolen may recover, as restitution, the reasonable value of those goods on the market to which the seller would resort to replace those goods at the time and place of conversion, together with any additional losses that the state proves the victim sustained. In this case, because the state did not prove any such additional losses, the victim was limited to restitution in the amount of the reasonable wholesale value of the jeans. The Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Islam" on Justia Law

Defendant was charged with first-degree rape of the victim, a friend who had spent the night on defendant’s couch after an evening of drinking. The victim contacted the police following the incident, and Detective Myers asked the victim if she would send defendant text messages to “try to get [defendant] to make a comment about what had happened between the two of them.” The victim agreed, and Myers instructed her on the content of the messages. The victim sent defendant two text messages. Defendant did not respond to either message. At trial, defendant challenged the admissibility of the text messages and his nonresponse on both constitutional and evidentiary grounds. The trial court concluded that neither objection was well taken, and the jury found defendant guilty. The Court of Appeals affirmed. After review, the Supreme Court concluded that the text messages and defendant’s nonresponse constituted inadmissible hearsay, and that the trial court erred in admitting them. The Court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. View "Oregon v. Schiller-Munneman" on Justia Law

The taxpayer who owned the convention center in Bend also owned a hotel across the street. The convention center and the hotel were held in different property tax accounts. For the 2008-09 tax year, Taxpayer’s appraisal valued the convention center at $4,130,000, after applying two different approaches to valuation, the cost approach and the income approach. The appraiser for the Deschutes County Assessor (assessor) and the Department of Revenue (department) appraised the convention center at $16,700,000, after applying only the cost approach to valuation. The Regular Division of the Tax Court rejected the department’s appraisal for two independent reasons: (1) Measure 50 (codified as Article XI, section 11, of the Oregon Constitution) and its enabling statutes required the property in each tax account to be valued separately; and (2) the department’s appraisal was unpersuasive because the appraiser lacked good reason for not having used the income approach. The Tax Court awarded taxpayer its attorney fees, concluding that the department’s position was not objectively reasonable and that the department should be deterred from making similar arguments in the future. The department and the assessor appealed, raising a narrow range of issues. After review, the Supreme Court affirmed the Tax Court’s decision to reject the department’s appraisal on the ground that it was unpersuasive. Because that independent reason supported the Tax Court’s decision, the Supreme Court affirmed its judgment, and did not reach the issue of whether Measure 50 required valuing the property in each property tax account separately. Because it was based in part on the Tax Court’s Measure 50 analysis, the Supreme Court vacated the award of attorney fees and remanded for further proceedings. View "Dept. of Rev. v. River's Edge Investments, LLC" on Justia Law

Defendant Amanda Newcomb was convicted of second-degree animal neglect after she failed to adequately feed her dog, Juno, resulting in his malnourishment. Before trial, defendant moved to suppress blood test results showing that Juno had no medical condition that would have caused him to be malnourished, which in turn indicated that Juno was malnourished because he was starving. Defendant argued that the state had violated both Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, and the Fourth Amendment to the federal Constitution by failing to obtain a warrant before testing the dog’s blood. The trial court denied the motion and allowed the state to introduce the test results during trial. Defendant appealed to the Court of Appeals, which agreed with defendant that she had a protected privacy interest in her dog’s blood that required the state to obtain a search warrant, unless the circumstances fit within an exception to the warrant requirement, and reversed. The Supreme Court concluded defendant had no privacy interest in the dog's blood under the State or federal constitutions, and reversed. View "Oregon v. Newcomb" on Justia Law

The question in this case was whether an injured worker had to provide actual notice of secondary employment in connection with a workers' compensation claims process or whether the employer’s preexisting knowledge of that employment could be imputed to the insurer to satisfy the notice requirement of ORS 656.210(2)(b)(A). The Oregon Supreme Court held that the correct interpretation of ORS 656.210(2)(b)(A) required a claimant to prove that the insurer received actual notice of the claimant’s secondary employment within 30 days of the insurer’s receipt of the initial claim. View "DCBS v. Muliro" on Justia Law

This appeal arose from a legal malpractice and negligent misrepresentation case where the trial court judgment granted a directed a verdict in favor of defendant Jack Platten. In an earlier lawsuit, defendant had represented plaintiffs the Harknesses against Kantor, a loan officer, and her successive employers, Sunset Mortgage (Sunset) and Directors Mortgage, Inc. (Directors), as the result of a fraudulent investment and loan scheme directed at plaintiffs by Kantor. That case did not settle to plaintiffs’ satisfaction, and plaintiffs sought to recover their remaining loss from defendant. In this case, the trial court granted defendant’s motion for a directed verdict based on the conclusion that plaintiffs’ liability theories of apparent authority and respondeat superior asserted against Sunset and Directors were not supported by sufficient evidence in the record and could not have led to a result more favorable than the settlement. Plaintiffs appealed the trial court ruling, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded that the Court of Appeals interpreted the prevailing caselaw incorrectly, and that a reasonable factfinder could have inferred from the evidence presented that defendants authorized the investment scheme. The court reversed the directed verdict and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Harkness v. Platten" on Justia Law