Tanhya Ranee Flores v. Hebert Aragon Nunez

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: December 17, 2025
• Docket: 24-1037
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1037 Filed December 17, 2025

TANHYA RANEE FLORES, Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

HEBERT ARAGON NUNEZ, Defendant-Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cerro Gordo County, Blake H.

Norman, Judge.

Hebert Aragon Nunez appeals the district court’s issuance of a protective

order against him pursuant to Iowa Code chapter 236 (2024). APPEAL

DISMISSED.

Nathan Sandbothe of Parrish Kruidenier, L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellant.

Richard N. Tompkins Jr., Mason City, for appellee.

Considered without oral argument by Tabor, C.J., and Ahlers and

Langholz, JJ. 2

AHLERS, Judge.

The district court issued a domestic abuse protective order pursuant to Iowa

Code chapter 236 (2024) to protect Tanhya Ranee Flores from Hebert Aragon

Nunez. Aragon Nunez appeals. He contends the evidence is insufficient to

establish that he committed domestic-abuse assault, so the district court erred by

issuing the order.

Before we can address the merits of Aragon Nunez’s contention, we must

first decide whether this appeal is moot. By its terms, the protective order at issue

has expired, which raises the issue of mootness. See Riley Drive Ent. I, Inc. v.

Reynolds, 970 N.W.2d 289, 296 (Iowa 2022) (“Courts exist to decide cases, not

academic questions of law. For this reason, a court will generally decline to hear

a case when, because of changed circumstances, the court’s decision will no

longer matter. This is known as the doctrine of mootness.” (quoting Homan v.

Branstad, 864 N.W.2d 321, 328 (Iowa 2015))). We invited supplemental briefing

on the mootness issue, which both parties accepted. Aragon Nunez’s brief alleged

facts outside the record in support of his claim that we should apply an exception

to the mootness doctrine. We are permitted to “consider matters technically

outside the district court record in determining a question of mootness.” Id. But

the facts alleged in Aragon Nunez’s brief are unsubstantiated, not conceded, and

not easily verifiable. The facts alleged are also not “peculiarly within the

knowledge” of counsel, so we cannot consider them as a professional statement.

See State v. Fetner, 959 N.W.2d 129, 135 (Iowa 2021) (noting that a professional

statement is one “used as a matter of convenience and practical necessity to 3

establish a record of matters peculiarly within the knowledge of an attorney”

(cleaned up)).

To give Aragon Nunez the opportunity to substantiate the facts alleged in

his supplemental brief, we issued an order permitting Aragon Nunez to file a motion

seeking to supplement the record. That order imposed a deadline of twenty-one

days for filing the motion and directed that the motion be accompanied by

attachments of any evidence he is asking the court to consider. The order also

required any attachments to the motion to be authenticated by affidavit or

otherwise. Aragon Nunez failed to comply with the order. He filed nothing within

the twenty-one-day deadline. When he submitted a filing five days after the

deadline expired, the filing was not a motion.1 Instead, he simply filed a photocopy

of an identification card. No affidavit or other form of authentication accompanied

the filing of the card.

Due to the untimely nature of Aragon Nunez’s filing, the failure to submit the

proposed evidence as an attachment to a motion, and the failure to authenticate

it, we do not consider the filing. Much of Aragon Nunez’s argument for application

of exceptions to the mootness doctrine relies on facts alleged in his brief that are

not part of our record, and we will not consider those alleged facts for the reasons

previously stated. As a result, we disregard any arguments that are based on

outside-the-record factual allegations, including those related to Aragon Nunez’s

1 Filing a motion was an important term of our order, as the order gave Flores the

opportunity to resist the motion and file competing evidence with the same authentication requirements imposed on Aragon Nunez. By failing to file a motion, Aragon Nunez short-circuited the procedure set by the order for Flores to respond to Aragon Nunez’s filing. 4

alleged immigration status. The arguments left for our consideration are that

(1) we should apply the collateral-consequences exception to mootness in general

to Iowa Code chapter 236 cases, and (2) we should apply the public-importance

exception to mootness in general to Iowa Code chapter 236 cases. We address

each in turn.

An exception to the mootness doctrine “provides that an appeal is not moot

if a judgment left standing will cause the appellant to suffer continuing adverse

collateral consequences.” In re B.B., 826 N.W.2d 425, 429 (Iowa 2013). Aragon

Nunez contends this exception applies because the expired order still has a

stigmatizing effect on him. We acknowledge that our supreme court has applied

the collateral-consequences exception by presuming adverse collateral

consequences in an appeal from a mental-health commitment order. See id.

at 431. And our court has applied B.B.’s reasoning to an appeal from a substance-

use commitment order. See In re J.G., No. 12-1220, 2013 WL 2107462, at *1–2

(Iowa Ct. App. May 15, 2013). But neither the supreme court nor our court has

presumed such adverse collateral consequences in general to chapter 236

protective orders, so we do not make such a presumption here. As Aragon Nunez

identifies no specific consequence stemming from the issuance of the challenged

order, we will not speculate as to such consequences. See State v. Johnson,

No. 16-0976, 2017 WL 2684342, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. June 21, 2017) (declining

to apply the collateral-consequences exception when the claimed consequences

are “pure conjecture” or “too attenuated and speculative”). We decline to apply the

collateral-consequences exception to the mootness doctrine based on this record. 5

Another exception to mootness upon which Aragon Nunez relies is the

public-importance exception. Riley Drive, 970 N.W.2d at 298. We consider four

factors to determine whether to apply this exception:

(1) the private or public nature of the issue; (2) the desirability of an authoritative adjudication to guide public officials in their future conduct; (3) the likelihood of the recurrence of the issue; and (4) the likelihood the issue will recur yet evade appellate review.

Id. (citation omitted). Though Aragon Nunez argues that the first, second, and

fourth factors weigh in favor of applying the exception, we disagree. This is a

private dispute, and ruling on the merits will not provide much, if any, guidance to

public officials. So, the first two factors weigh against applying the exception. Also,

given the fact-specific challenge Aragon Nunez makes here, there is little to no

likelihood of recurrence of the issue, so the third factor also weighs against

applying the exception. As to the fourth factor, Aragon Nunez has a point that the

length of time to process an appeal poses a risk that appeals in chapter 236 cases

may evade review. But, as our court has recognized, this risk can be reduced or

avoided by requesting expedited briefing. T.F. v. C.G., No. 23-1761, 2025 WL

412059, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 5, 2025). No such efforts to reduce or avoid this

risk were made here. After weighing the four factors, we decline to apply the

public-importance exception to the mootness doctrine.

As the order being challenged here has expired and no exceptions to the

mootness doctrine apply, we dismiss Aragon Nunez’s appeal as moot.

APPEAL DISMISSED.