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Julian Jay Toney v. Hazel Parker, et al. IA Civil Procedure
A summary judgment motion was pending in this Decatur County, Iowa, case, and the party opposing the motion had already been granted an extension to file a resistance. On the night the response was due (apparently after the clerk's office was closed), the attorney's paralegal filed a two-page resistance, a 46 page memorandum, a 25-page response to the statement of facts, and a 79-page appendix containing various exhibits. Page 76 of the appendix contained a social security number of the client.
At 8:37 the next morning, the filing was rejected because of the social security number. In less thatn an hour, the paralegal redacted the number and re-filed. However, the two-page resistance was missing from the new filing.
The opposing party filed a motion to strike, and the trial court granted the motion. After subsequent proceedings, the party opposing the motion appealed, and the case was ultimately heard by the Iowa Supreme Court.
The high court cited a similar case, Jacobs v. Iowa Department of Transportation, 887 N.W.2d 590 (Iowa 2016), which noted that a trial court's jurisdiction could not be premised on how the clerk exercised his or her discretion.
In this case, the same rationale applied. The document in question contained the party's own social security number, and the clerk could have and should have redacted that number rather than rejecting the entire filing. Under these circumstances, the high court held that the filing should have related back to the time of original filing. Therefore, it was timely.
The Court quoted a federal case:
Justice is not served by taking a heavy-handed approach to violations of [summary judgment procedural] rules. . . . Imposing Draconian sanctions for isolated rule violations, however, does far more than simply punish[ ] the attorneys. Rather, such an approach destroys the vital right of the, most likely, innocent client to have her day in Court simply because her attorney mistakenly violates a local procedural rule.
For these reasons, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded. Also at issue was a recusal motion. However, the Supreme Court decided to not reach that issue. Instead, on its own authority, it ordered the case to be heard by a different judge on remand.
No. 19-2121 (Iowa Apr. 16, 2021).
Please see the original opinion for the court's exact language.
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Richard P. Clem is an attorney and continuing legal education (CLE) provider in Minnesota. He has been in private practice in the Twin Cities for 25 years. He has a J.D., cum laude, from Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul and a B.A. in History from the University of Minnesota. His reported cases include: Asociacion Nacional de Pescadores a Pequena Escala o Artesanales de Colombia v. Dow Quimica de Colombia, 988 F.2d 559, rehearing denied, 5 F.3d 530 (5th Cir. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1041 (1994); LaMott v. Apple Valley Health Care Center, 465 N.W.2d 585 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991); Abo el Ela v. State, 468 N.W.2d 580 (Minn. Ct. App. 1991).
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