Hatchell v. Wren

211 S.W.3d 516, 363 Ark. 107
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedJune 30, 2005
Docket05-91
StatusPublished
Cited by30 cases

This text of 211 S.W.3d 516 (Hatchell v. Wren) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hatchell v. Wren, 211 S.W.3d 516, 363 Ark. 107 (Ark. 2005).

Opinion

Donald L. Corbin, Justice.

Appellant Vickie Hatchell appeals the order of the Mississippi County Circuit Court granting summary judgment to Appellee Dwight Wren. The facts are that while Appellant was visiting Appellee’s home, Appellee backed his car into her car, causing damage. Appellee agreed to have the car repaired and return it to Appellant, who lived in Oklahoma at the time. Appellee had the car repaired at his expense, in the amount of $4,844.54. He then met Appellant and her husband at a location in central Arkansas and delivered the car to them. Sometime later, Appellant received a check for the amount of the repairs from Appellee’s insurer. Instead of reimbursing Appellee for the repair bill, however, Appellant cashed the check and kept the money. Appellee filed suit against her for conversion and unjust enrichment. Along with the complaint, Appellee served Appellant with eight requests for admission. Appellant did not timely respond, and the requests were deemed admitted, pursuant to Ark. R. Civ. P. 36. Appellant argued that two of the requests were improper requests of law, not fact. The trial court granted summary judgment to Appellee, based on the admitted requests, and Appellant appeals. Our jurisdiction of this appeal is pursuant to Ark. Sup. Ct. R. l-2(b)(5), as it presents an issue requiring further development of the law. We affirm.

For her first point, Appellant asserts that the trial court erred in relying on the seventh and eighth requests for admission, as she asserts that they impermissibly sought only bare conclusions of law. To better understand this issue, we set out all the requests for admission:

1. Your 2001 Dodge Intrepid was damaged in the summer of 2003 while at the residence of the Plaintiff, Dwight Wren.
2. The 2001 Dodge Intrepid referred to was repaired and, after repaired, was delivered to you.
3. No complaints concerning the repair were offered or made by you at the time of delivery of the vehicle to you.
4. Subsequent to acceptance of the repaired vehicle, you received a check in the amount of $4,844.54.
5. The check referred to, from Columbia Mutual Insurance Company for $4,844.54, was cashed and the money retained by you.
6. You have refused to deliver the funds from the cashing of the check mentioned above to the Plaintiff, Dwight Wren.
7. You were not entitled to the funds represented by the check of $4,844.54.
8. You are indebted to Dwight Wren in the sum of $4,844.54.

Rule 36(a) provides that each requested admission will be deemed admitted if the party to whom they are addressed does not timely file a written answer or objection to them. The rule reflects in pertinent part:

The matter is admitted unless, within 30 days after service of the request, the party to whom the request is directed serves upon the party requesting the admission a written answer or objection addressed to the matter, signed by the party or by his attorney. However, a defendant shall have 30 days after service of the request or 45 days after he has been served with the summons and complaint to answer, whichever time is longer. These time periods may be shortened or lengthened by the court.

Appellant does not dispute that she failed to file written answers or objections to the requests within the time prescribed in Rule 36. Nor does she take issue with the fact that the trial court ruled that the matters were deemed admitted, except as to the seventh and eighth admissions. She argues that those two requests asked for bare conclusions of law, not for admissions of fact. She relies on the court of appeals’ decision in In the Matter of Dailey, 30 Ark. App. 8, 784 S.W.2d 782 (1989).

In Dailey, the appellant birth mother claimed that she had only consented to the adoption of her child to the appellees under fraud and duress. The appellees filed sixteen requests for admission. Request number two asked the appellant to admit that she was “not acting under duress, fraud or under misrepresentation at the time [she] executed the Consent to Adopt,” and request number sixteen asked her to admit “that it would be in the best interests of the minor child that this adoption be granted.” Id. at 10, 784 S.W.2d at 783. The appellant did not timely answer the requests, and the trial court ruled that they were deemed admitted. Relying on the second and sixteenth requests, the trial court granted summary judgment to the appellees. The court of appeals reversed, holding:

Requests for admissions are generally considered to be designed to ascertain an adversary’s position, and are not discovery devices to ascertain relevant facts. The purpose of the rule is to facilitate trial by weeding out facts about which there is no true controversy but which are often difficult or expensive to prove.
Although the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure allow for a request for an admission which concerns the application of law to fact, Ark. R. Civ. P. 36(a), admissions designed to directly discover what legal conclusions the opposing attorney intends to draw from those facts are improper. An element of the burden of proof, or even the ultimate issue in the case may be addressed in a request for admission under Rule 36, and the admission of these matters may not be avoided because the request calls for application of the facts to the law, the truth of an ultimate issue, or opinion or conclusion so long as the opinion called for is not on an abstract proposition of law. It is the concession of the issue, otherwise determinable by the trier of fact, which comes into evidence, not the assumptions of the party who makes the admission. A request for admission of apure matter of law is improper.

Id. at 10-11, 784 S.W.2d at 783 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).

We agree with the reasoning expounded by the court of appeals in Dailey, and we conclude that holding is controlling of the issue in this case. Here, as in Dailey, the requests called for bare conclusions of law. They asked Appellant to admit that she was not “entitled” to the insurance proceeds and that she was “indebted” to Appellant for the amount of the proceeds. Whether one is entitled to property or indebted to another is purely an issue of law. Rule 36(a) provides that requests for admission are limited to discoverable matters “that relate to statements or opinions of fact or the application of law to fact[.]” Requests numbers seven and eight neither called for statements or opinions of fact nor the application of law to fact. It was thus error for the trial court to have viewed them as admissions.

Notwithstanding our conclusion that these requests called for pure admissions of law, we affirm the trial court’s grant of summary judgment, as the remaining admissions left no issue of material fact in dispute.

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Bluebook (online)
211 S.W.3d 516, 363 Ark. 107, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hatchell-v-wren-ark-2005.