Ballinger v. Nooth

295 P.3d 115, 254 Or. App. 402, 2012 WL 6712038, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1534
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedDecember 27, 2012
Docket10037948P; A146788
StatusPublished
Cited by132 cases

This text of 295 P.3d 115 (Ballinger v. Nooth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ballinger v. Nooth, 295 P.3d 115, 254 Or. App. 402, 2012 WL 6712038, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1534 (Or. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

NAKAMOTO, J.

In this action for post-conviction relief, the post-conviction court granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment and entered judgment after petitioner’s attorney, without notifying petitioner, informed the court that he would not file a response. Acting for himself under State v. Balfour, 311 Or 434, 814 P2d 1069 (1991), and ORAP 5.90, petitioner appeals the denial of his motion for relief from the judgment entered against him, brought under ORCP 71 B(l)(a). Petitioner also raises supplemental assignments of error related to the merits of his action for post-conviction relief, specifically, his sentence. For the following reasons, we affirm.

We state the facts relevant to the ORCP 71 motion, which are undisputed. Petitioner was convicted of first-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse. Following his conviction, petitioner filed a petition for post-conviction relief pursuant to ORS 138.510 to 138.680. In his petition, he claimed that his trial counsel was ineffective by failing to investigate his case and interview witnesses. On September 20, 2010, defendant Nooth, the superintendent of the Snake River Correctional Institution, moved for summary judgment on the ground that petitioner could not prove that his trial counsel was inadequate or that petitioner was prejudiced. On September 27, 2010, a week after the filing of the motion, petitioner’s post-conviction attorney, Mahony, sent a letter to the post-conviction court informing it that petitioner would not be filing a response to defendant’s motion, even though Mahony had not consulted with or informed petitioner about the summary judgment motion. That day, the post-conviction court signed an order in which it noted that petitioner had “not to respond” and granted defendant’s motion for summary judgment. On September 28, 2010, the clerk of the court entered the judgment dismissing the action.

On that same day, September 28, petitioner received a letter from Mahony dated September 26. The letter informed petitioner that Mahony was not going to respond to defendant’s motion for summary judgment. Approximately one month later, on November 4, 2010, petitioner filed a motion for relief from the judgment with a supporting [405]*405memorandum of law, contending that he should be granted relief because Mahony had failed to communicate with him and he had not been provided an opportunity to personally respond to defendant’s motion. Petitioner relied on ORCP 71 B(l)(a), which provides that, upon a party’s motion,

“and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party or such party’s legal representative from a judgment for the following reasons: (a) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect * * *. A motion for reasons (a), *** shall be accompanied by a pleading or motion under Rule 21A which contains an assertion of a claim or defense. % * * »

Petitioner also filed an affidavit in support of his motion. In the affidavit, petitioner testified to the sequence of events stated above. He also affirmed that, if he had known about defendant’s motion, he would have responded to it. He did not include, with his motion for relief from the judgment, a proposed response to defendant’s motion for summary judgment or include any evidence of how his trial attorney in the criminal case was ineffective.

Defendant filed a memorandum in response, arguing that petitioner had not identified a specific ground for relief from the judgment. Defendant did not controvert the salient factual background, namely, that Mahony had not consulted with petitioner and that petitioner was not informed that defendant had filed a summary judgment motion until a judgment had already been entered in defendant’s favor. The post-conviction court denied petitioner’s motion for relief from the judgment with a handwritten notation of “no legal basis” on petitioner’s motion, and petitioner timely appealed.

On appeal, petitioner again asserts that the post-conviction court should have allowed him to respond to the summary judgment motion because Mahony neither consulted with petitioner nor gave him the opportunity to file a pro se response before sending his letter to the court. Although petitioner’s assignment of error states that the post-conviction court erred in granting summary judgment without allowing him an opportunity to file a response, petitioner’s arguments challenge the post-conviction court’s [406]*406denial of his motion for relief from the judgment. Defendant counters that challenge by asserting that petitioner, through his attorney, had a chance to respond to defendant’s summary judgment motion but is bound by his attorney’s failure to file a response on his behalf. Defendant relies on the proposition that “professional mistakes, negligence, or inadvertence of an attorney do not constitute the ‘mistakes, inadvertence, surprise, or inexcusable neglect’ necessary to set aside a judgment” under ORCP 71 B(l)(a), citing McCarthy v. Oregon Freeze Dry, Inc., 158 Or App 654, 658, 976 P2d 566 (1999), rev’d on other grounds, 334 Or 77, 46 P3d 721 (2002). Defendant also argues that petitioner was required to provide evidence on the merits of the summary judgment motion when he sought relief from the judgment.

We review the denial of the motion for relief from the judgment for abuse of discretion. Compton v. Lampert, 226 Or App 420, 422, 203 P3d 924, rev den, 346 Or 589 (2009). By its terms, ORCP 71 B(l) requires that a motion to set aside a judgment for mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or inexcusable neglect be “accompanied by a pleading or motion under Rule 21 A” that “contains an assertion of a claim or defense.” A court “abuses its discretion by considering an ORCP 71 B(l) motion that is not ‘complete,’ that is, that does not contain a responsive pleading!.]” Dickey v. Rehder, 239 Or App 253, 259, 244 P3d 819 (2010), rev den, 349 Or 664 (2011) (the defendant obtained relief from a default judgment pursuant to ORCP 69 C and ORCP 71 B(l) after submitting a corrected ORCP 71 B(l) motion with a responsive pleading); see also Duvall v. McLeod, 331 Or 675, 680, 21 P3d 88 (2001) (holding that a motion under ORCP 71 B(l) must be accompanied by a responsive pleading and that the trial court abused its discretion by setting aside the default judgment without the accompanying pleading). This case, though, concerns a summary judgment motion, not a pleading. See, ORCP 13 (defining and describing “pleadings”). Petitioner had earlier filed a pleading, a petition for post-conviction relief, asserting that his trial counsel was ineffective. Rule 71 B(l) is not clear on its face that a response to a summary judgment motion is necessary when moving for relief from the summary judgment.

[407]*407We assume, without deciding, that the action of petitioner’s attorney in essentially conceding the summary judgment motion, without prior consultation with petitioner or even notice to him of the existence of the motion and petitioner’s option to submit a response himself, went beyond mere negligence, professional mistake, or inadvertence and was an unauthorized act in breach of duties to his client that could justify the granting of relief from the summary judgment.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
295 P.3d 115, 254 Or. App. 402, 2012 WL 6712038, 2012 Ore. App. LEXIS 1534, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ballinger-v-nooth-orctapp-2012.