440 N. SF v. Vista Heights Inv.

550 P.3d 1019

2024 UT App 73

440 NORTH SF, LLC, Appellant,

v.VISTA HEIGHTS INVESTMENTS, LLC and SII MegaDiamond, Inc., Appellees.

No. 20220785-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed May 16, 2024

Fourth District Court, Provo Department, The Honorable Robert A. Lund, No. 210400480

Spencer Macdonald, Attorney for Appellant

James K. Tracy, Joshua L. Lee, Salt Lake City, and Steve L. Lundwall, Attorneys for Appellees

Judge David N. Mortensen authored this Opinion, in which Judges Ryan M. Harris and Amy J. Oliver concurred.

Opinion

MORTENSEN, Judge:

[1] ¶1 Appellant 440 North SF, LLC (440 North) purchased a residentiary zoned lot (Residential Parcel) in Provo, Utah. A road runs between that lot and the neighboring property—a commercially zoned lot (Com- mercial Parcel) owned by Appellee Vista Heights Investments, LLC (Vista Heights) and upon which Appellee SII MegaDiamond, Inc. (MegaDiamond) runs a diamond manufacturing business. 440 North later realized that the road the diamond business uses to access part of the manufacturing facility lies on the Residential Parcel and sued for trespass and to quiet title, in addition to other claims. Appellees counterclaimed for a declaratory judgment establishing an easement. On a motion for summary judgment, the district court ruled that the undisputed facts entitled Appellees to judgment as a matter of law and certified its judgment as final. 440 North raises two grounds for reversal. We reject them each and affirm.

BACKGROUND¹

¶2 This dispute involves two parcels of adjacent real property in Provo, Utah—the Residential Parcel to the east and the Commercial Parcel to the west. Ownership of the properties has changed hands several times over the last decade—including two intervals where they were owned by the same entity. From 2012 to 2015, Novatek, Inc. (Novatek), a company owned by David Hall, owned both the Commercial Parcel and the Residential Parcel. In 2015, Novatek conveyed both properties to another company owned by Hall, New Vistas Property Holdings, LLC (New Vistas). In 2018, New Vistas conveyed the Commercial Parcel to Vista Heights and the Residential Parcel to DRH Holdings, LLC (DRH), which was also owned by Hall. Then, in 2020, 440 North purchased the Residential Parcel from DRH.

¶3 This lawsuit centers around an asphalt road (Road) that follows the east side of the Commercial Parcel and sits mostly on the western edge of the Residential Parcel. The Road is "approximately 38 feet wide and 210 feet long." The location of the Road corresponds with the approximate location of an easement (RR Easement) that Union Pacific Railroad recorded as early as 1978. Union Pacific laid railroad tracks across the entirety of the RR Easement, and those tracks are now covered by the Road. In 2012, Novatek, the owner of both properties at the time, renovated a large building (Building) on the Commercial Parcel in order to run its diamond manufacturing business. In 2015, MegaDiamond purchased the diamond business from Novatek, and it has since leased the Commercial Parcel from Novatek and later New Vistas, followed by Vista Heights. MegaDiamond continues to run the business out of the Building in the same manner that Novatek did.

¶4 The back of the Building is "only a few feet" from the Road and the property line of the Residential Parcel. The back of the Building includes a research and development space (R&D Space) with."large overhead doors." MegaDiamond uses heavy equipment on the Road (as did Novatek previously) "including semi-trucks and industrial capacity fork lifts to move multi-ton granite boulders" through the doors of the R&D Space. Access to the R&D Space, aside from foot traffic, is possible only through the overhead doors that face the Residential Parcel.

¶5 In 2021, 440 North filed the present lawsuit against Appellees seeking (1) declaratory judgment regarding each party’s rights to the Road, (2) to quiet title, and (3) damages for trespass. Appellees brought a counterclaim for declaratory judgment to establish an easement by implication for the Road on the Residential Parcel to benefit the Commercial Parcel. Later, Appellees filed a motion for summary judgment on both the complaint and the counterclaim. The district court granted the motion, holding that Appellees "established by undisputed facts all of the elements of an implied easement."²

¶6 440 North then filed a rule 60(b) motion to set aside the judgment, see Utah R. Civ. P. 60(b), raising for the first time the argument that any commercial use of the Road was unlawful because the Residential Parcel was zoned for only residential use. The district court denied the motion, concluding that the zoning information was public record and therefore available before the lawsuit commenced. 440 North appeals.

ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

[2] ¶7 440 North raises two issues on appeal. First, 440 North argues that the district court erred in granting Appellees’ summary judgment motion.³ "We review the district court’s ultimate grant or denial of summary judgment for correctness," giving no deference to the district court’s legal conclusions. Far West Bank v. Robertson, 2017 UT App 213, ¶ 15, 406 P.3d 1134 (cleaned up).

[3, 4] ¶8 Second, 440 North argues that the district court erred by denying its rule 60(b) motion. "A district court has broad discretion to rule on a motion to set aside a judgment under rule 60(b)." Weber v. Mikarose, LLC, 2015 UT App 130, ¶ 11, 351 P.3d 121 (cleaned up). Therefore, we review a district court’s denial of such a motion under an abuse of discretion standard. See id.

ANALYSIS

I. Summary Judgment Motion

¶9 We turn first to 440 North’s contention that summary judgment was inappropriate. In challenging the court’s summary judgment order, 440 North raises three subsidiary arguments. First, it claims that genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment. Second, it asserts that the district court applied the wrong standard of proof. And finally, it asserts that the elements of an implied easement are not present here, at least not as a matter of law. We address these arguments in turn.

A. Genuine Issues of Material Fact

[5–7] ¶10 440 North argues that the district court erred in granting Appellees’ summary judgment motion because ten genuine issues of material fact precluded entry of summary judgment. Summary judgment is appropriate when "the moving party shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Utah R. Civ. P. 56(a). In the summary judgment context, "the word ‘genuine’ indicates that a district court is not required to draw every possible inference of fact, no matter how remote or improbable, in favor of the nonmoving party. Instead, it is required to draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party." IHC Health Servs., Inc. v. D&K Mgmt., Inc., 2008 UT 73, ¶ 19, 196 P.3d 588. "An inference is unreasonable if there is no underlying evidence to support the conclusion." Medina v. Jeff Dumas Concrete Constr. LLC, 2020 UT App 166, ¶ 21, 479 P.3d 1116 (cleaned up). "When the facts are so tenuous, vague, or insufficiently established that determining an issue of fact becomes completely speculative, the claim fails as a matter of law, and summary judgment is appropriate." Hardy v. Sagacious Grace LC, 2021 UT App 23, ¶ 21, 483 P.3d 1275 (cleaned up).

[8, 9] ¶11 440 North’s argument on appeal primarily consists of only a bulleted list delineating each fact it considers in dispute. 440 North gives us no analysis as to why these facts are in dispute or why the district court erred by relying on them. The brief simply states that "an affidavit, as well as other evidence, was presented in the summary judgment proceedings disputing the foregoing matters." 440 North does not explain the content of the affidavit or what this "other evidence" entails, again providing this court with no analysis as to why it should accept its argument. 440 North concludes this two-page argument with the contention that "even a single dispute of material fact is sufficient to overcome summary judgment." While that general proposition is correct, 440 North does not explain how even a single material fact is in genuine dispute here. Just as importantly, 440 North makes no attempt to show how any alleged disputes of fact are material to any of the legal conclusions the district court reached. Such an important connection is not self-evident, at least not to us.⁴

¶12 In Warner v. Warner, 2014 UT App 16, 319 P.3d 711, our court faced a similar briefing concern where trust beneficiaries appealed the district court’s grant of summary judgment against their breach of fiduciary duty claims. Id. ¶ 49. The beneficiaries similarly devoted just two pages to their argument, and, rather than identifying the elements of their breach of fiduciary duty claims, they "simply list[ed] a series of breaches alleged to have been committed by the [t]rustees without any analysis of the pertinence of those breaches or any discussion of how they create[d] a factual dispute of legal significance when compared with the facts and arguments made by the [t]rustees." Id. ¶ 51. Our court affirmed the summary judgment decision, explaining that the beneficiaries failed to meet their burden on appeal because the "cursory and incomplete description of the procedural, factual, and legal circumstances of the summary judgment proceeding … fail[ed] to provide context sufficient … to permit meaningful appellate review." Id. We similarly have not been provided with sufficient context or analysis to allow us to conclude that genuine issues of material fact precluded summary judgment in this case; therefore, 440 North has failed to meet its burden of persuasion on appeal, and we will not reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment on the basis that genuine issues of material fact remained in dispute.

B. Standard of Proof

[10] ¶13 In a single paragraph, 440...