Justia Alaska Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Parents appealed a superior court’s order that found the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) had satisfied the Indian Child Welfare Act’s (ICWA) requirements authorizing the removal of their daughter, an Indian child, from their custody. OCS took emergency custody of “Mary” and her older brother Claude in March 2014. It acted following a December 2013 report that Claude had been medivaced out of the family’s village due to alcohol poisoning and that his parents had been too intoxicated to accompany him, and a March 2014 report that Diego and Catharine were intoxicated and fighting in their home. OCS alleged in its emergency petition that the court should make child in need of aid (CINA) findings. At the custody hearing Diego and Catharine stipulated to probable cause that their children were in need of aid under AS 47.10.011, without admitting any of the facts alleged in the petition, and to temporary OCS custody pending an adjudication hearing. The superior court held a disposition hearing over two days in December and January. OCS argued for an order authorizing it to remove the children from their parents’ home; the parents urged the court to grant OCS only the authority to supervise the family. Because the Alaska Supreme Court found the trial court relied on information that was not in evidence to make the required ICWA removal findings, it vacated the order authorizing removal. View "Diego K. v. Dept. of Health & Social Services" on Justia Law

Unmarried parents separated and asked the superior court for a custody and child support order. The father was receiving military disability payments but was otherwise unemployed. In calculating his child support liability, the superior court imputed income to him of $40,000 in addition to his military disability payments. The court also apparently rejected the father’s request to deduct business losses, including depreciation, incurred by his rental properties. The father appealed. After review, the Alaska Supreme Court concluded that several aspects of the superior court’s findings of fact were not sufficiently explained for its review: (1) the basis of the imputed income figure; (2) the effect of employment on the father’s disability payments; and (3) whether the father is entitled to deduct claimed business losses from his income. The Court therefore vacated the child support order and remanded for the superior court’s further consideration of these issues. View "Farr v. Little" on Justia Law

An ex-husband challenged three decisions made by the superior court during divorce proceedings. He argued the court erred by: (1) failing to enforce the mandatory disclosure requirements of the Alaska Civil Rules with regard to his ex-wife’s financial information; (2) improperly valuing the marital home; and (3) awarding attorney’s fees against him for vexatious and bad faith conduct. The Alaska Supreme Court found no abuse of discretion or clear error in the court’s rulings and therefore affirmed the judgment. View "Olivera v. Rude-Olivera" on Justia Law

Kenneth Kessler purchased a condominium in the summer of 1999, shortly before he and Dianna Kessler began dating. Kenneth and Dianna lived in that condominium for nearly all of their 15-year relationship. In its property division order following the couple’s divorce, the superior court found that the condominium was originally Kenneth’s separate property but that it had transmuted into the couple’s marital property. Kenneth appealed. The Alaska Supreme Court reversed and remanded. The Court found the condominium only became marital property if Kenneth intended to donate it to the marital estate, and agreed with Kenneth that the evidence at trial did not demonstrate he possessed any such intent. By this opinion, the Court clarified Alaska law on transmutation by implied interspousal gift. View "Kessler v. Kessler" on Justia Law

In early 2010 Alvin Wassillie was serving out the remainder of a felony sentence at the Parkview Center halfway house in Anchorage. On February 19 he left Parkview on a pass to look for a job. Around the time of his return that afternoon a staff member saw someone toss a white bag through an open window into an upstairs room. Other staff members searched the room and found a white bag with a bottle of vodka in it. Parkview’s security manager identified Wassillie as the person who threw the bag (and presumably the vodka) into the building. Bringing alcohol into the facility was a violation of its rules, so Wassillie was asked to wait in the lobby while a report was made and the Department of Corrections (DOC) was contacted to take Wassillie back to jail. After waiting several hours in the lobby, Wassillie walked out of the facility. A jury found Wassillie guilty of escaping from a halfway house, and the court of appeals affirmed his conviction. The Alaska Supreme Court granted a petition for hearing on the issue of whether the conviction should be overturned because of the invalidity of the grand jury’s indictment. Wassillie argued that the indictment was based on inadmissible hearsay evidence — an incident report prepared by a staff member at the halfway house, relaying another resident’s description of the defendant’s conduct and introduced to the grand jury through the testimony of an uninvolved supervisor. The State countered that the incident report fell under the business records exception to the hearsay rule, and that even if it was inadmissible hearsay the conviction should not be reversed because any error in the grand jury proceeding was later made harmless by the error-free trial. The Supreme Court held that the incident report did not fall under the business records exception to the hearsay rule and should have been excluded. Because the evidence was otherwise insufficient to support the grand jury’s decision to indict, the indictment was invalid and the conviction had to be reversed. View "Wassillie v. Alaska" on Justia Law

The Alaska state professional licensing division brought an accusation of professional misconduct against a doctor, alleging that he acted incompetently when he prescribed phentermine and thyroid hormone for one of his patients. The division sought disciplinary sanctions against the doctor. After a hearing, an administrative law judge issued a proposed decision concluding that the division had failed to show that the doctor’s conduct fell below the standard of care in his field of practice and that no disciplinary sanctions were warranted. But the Medical Board instead adopted as its decision the proposal for action submitted by the division and revoked the doctor’s medical license. On appeal to the superior court, the case was remanded to the Board for consideration of the doctor’s own late-filed proposal for action. The Board reaffirmed its decision to revoke the doctor’s medical license, and the superior court affirmed that decision. The doctor appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court. Because the Medical Board’s decision to revoke the doctor’s medical license was not supported by substantial evidence, the Supreme Court reversed the superior court’s affirmance of that decision. View "Odom v. Alaska Division of Corporations, Business & Professional Licensing" on Justia Law

The superior court dismissed a Child in Need of Aid (CINA) petition because it believed it no longer had jurisdiction over the case after the disposition order granting the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) custody of the child had expired. Before dismissing the CINA petition, the superior court entered removal findings based only on a motion filed by OCS. The Alaska Supreme Court concluded this was error because the removal order was not supported by sufficient evidence and did not comply with the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). The Court determined jurisdiction over a CINA case was distinct from the grant of custody or supervision to OCS in a disposition order and that it derives from the child’s status as a child in need of aid. The Court reversed the superior court’s order dismissing the petition and remanded for further proceedings. View "Alaska Dept. of Health & Social Services v. Michelle P" on Justia Law

Two adjoining landowners disputed the creation and continuing validity of an easement for ingress and egress. The superior court held that a valid easement was created but had been extinguished by prescription. The issue this case presented for the Alaska Supreme Court’s review centered on whether one party’s mining activities, placing gravel piles, equipment, and a processing plant in the easement, were sufficient to prescriptively extinguish the entire easement. The Court held they were not: although the processing plant extinguished the portion of the easement on which it stood, the evidence presented regarding the gravel piles and equipment was insufficient to support extinguishing the entire easement. View "Reeves v. Godspeed Properties, LLC" on Justia Law

Two adjoining landowners disputed the creation and continuing validity of an easement for ingress and egress. The superior court held that a valid easement was created but had been extinguished by prescription. The issue this case presented for the Alaska Supreme Court’s review centered on whether one party’s mining activities, placing gravel piles, equipment, and a processing plant in the easement, were sufficient to prescriptively extinguish the entire easement. The Court held they were not: although the processing plant extinguished the portion of the easement on which it stood, the evidence presented regarding the gravel piles and equipment was insufficient to support extinguishing the entire easement. View "Reeves v. Godspeed Properties, LLC" on Justia Law

The City of Cordova evicted commercial tenants from city-owned land and was granted a money judgment against them for unpaid rent and sales taxes. The tenants left behind various improvements, as well as items of personal property related to their operation of a marine fueling facility on the land. The city pursued collection of its money judgment for several years before suspending its efforts; about eight years later it resumed its attempts to collect. The tenants, contending that they had reasonably assumed by the passage of time that the judgment had been satisfied, moved for an accounting of their left-behind property and the amount still owing on the judgment. The city informed the superior court that it had executed only on bank accounts and wages and that several improvements had reverted to city ownership and therefore did not count against the judgment. It claimed not to know what happened to the rest of the property the tenants identified as having been left behind. The superior court found the city’s response sufficient and allowed execution to continue. The tenants appealed, arguing that they were entitled to a better accounting of their left-behind property and that the city was estopped from contending that the judgment was still unsatisfied. The Alaska Supreme Court agreed in part, holding that it was the city’s burden to produce evidence of the property’s disposition and that it failed to carry this burden. Furthermore, the Supreme Court held there were genuine issues of material fact about whether the city was estopped from contending that the judgment remains unsatisfied. The Court therefore reversed the superior court’s order accepting the accounting and allowing execution to continue. The matter was remanded for further proceedings. View "Beecher v. City of Cordova" on Justia Law