2024 Archive | Court of Appeals Court Opinions

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cerro Gordo County, Rustin Davenport, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Badding and Chicchelly, JJ.  Opinion by Badding, J.  (10 pages)

            An applicant appeals a district court ruling denying his applications for postconviction relief.  OPINION HOLDS: We affirm the district court’s ruling, concluding that it properly denied the applicant’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Lee (North) County, John M. Wright, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Heard by Bower, C.J., and Badding and Langholz, JJ.  Opinion by Bower, C.J.  (7 pages)

            Lonnie Nye appeals the district court’s denial of his petition to modify the parties’ dissolution decree, claiming his disability payments through his pension are spousal support subject to modification.  OPINION HOLDS: We affirm.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Des Moines County, Michael J. Schilling, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Bower, C.J., and Greer and Chicchelly, JJ.  Opinion by Greer, J. (14 pages)

            Raymond Showers appeals his conviction for third-degree sexual abuse, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the conviction.  OPINION HOLDS: We find that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that the defendant performed a sex act with the victim against her force of will, and we affirm.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Bremer County, Rustin Davenport, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Heard by Tabor, P.J., and Greer and Schumacher, JJ.  Opinion by Greer, J.  (14 pages)

            A limited liability company (LLC) challenges the dismissal of its petition for judicial review.  OPINION HOLDS: Because the statute at issue here—Iowa Code section 96.1A (2022)—defines wages, we are bound by its definition.  Its definition includes all remuneration received by a member of the LLC unless proportional to membership interest.  Thus, Iowa Workforce Development’s (IWD)’s determination that only the amount of remuneration one member received beyond that of the other member was wages is a correct interpretation of a provision of law, with justification, and required by law.  The calculation that IWD used to determine the amount of that remuneration that is wages was reasonable and correct.  We affirm the court’s dismissal of the LLC’s petition for judicial review.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Monroe County, Crystal S. Cronk, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Bower, C.J., and Schumacher and Langholz, JJ.  Opinion by Langholz, J.  (10 pages)

            Duke Carter appeals the district court’s ruling in a quiet-title action rejecting his claim of ownership of a disputed parcel of land by adverse possession.  OPINION HOLDS: Assuming Carter eventually did act as owner of the disputed land, we cannot find proof of ten straight years of qualifying conduct.  Nor do we find most of Carter’s use to be hostile, as the prior owners permitted Carter to store items on the lot, and Carter has failed to show any act or event that ripened his possession from permissive to hostile.  And so, because the law favors regular title and Carter has not shown clear and positive proof of hostile, continuous possession of Lot 3, we affirm the district court’s rejection of his adverse-possession claim.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Webster County, Angela L. Doyle, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Heard by Bower, C.J., and Tabor, Greer, Schumacher, and Chicchelly, JJ.  Opinion by Greer, J.  (9 pages)

            The defendant appeals his conviction for first-degree murder.  OPINION HOLDS: The State presented substantial evidence that Russell did not act in self-defense because he instigated the physical altercation, escalated it, and continued it after disarming the victim.  We affirm.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Lyon County, Charles Borth, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Heard by Tabor, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.  Opinion by Langholz, J.  (16 pages)

            A family farming corporation—Daniels, Inc.—and its majority shareholders—three brothers and the estate of their mother—appeal the district court’s determination of the fair value of their sisters’ shares in Daniels, Inc. after it elected to buy the shares to avoid corporate dissolution under Iowa Code section 490.1434 (2021).  They argue the district court used the wrong valuation date and failed to discount the valuation for potential tax consequences and transaction costs.  OPINION HOLDS: The plain text of section 490.1434(4) presumptively sets the valuation date as the day before the sisters filed their amended petition first asserting a dissolution claim—not the day before their original petition seeking damages for common law minority-shareholder oppression.  And since a sale of the farming corporation’s assets was not imminent—or even expected ever—it was proper not to discount the corporation’s fair value for hypothetical taxes or transaction costs.  We thus affirm the district court's fair-value determination of the sisters’ shares.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Fayette County, Richard D. Stochl, Judge.  SENTENCE VACATED IN PART AND REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING.  Considered by Schumacher, P.J., Ahlers, J., and Potterfield, S.J.  Opinion by Ahlers, J. (5 pages)

            Isaiah Duffield appeals the sentence imposed following his guilty plea.  OPINION HOLDS: Because Duffield cannot establish the district court committed any legal error or abused its discretion when selecting the amount of the fine, we do not disturb the fine imposed.  But because the district court did not provide any reasoning for imposing the sentence in this case consecutively to a sentence in a separate case, we must remand for resentencing as to whether the sentence should run consecutively to the other sentence.  Resentencing is to be before a different judge.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, James N. Daane, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Bower, C.J., Badding, J., and Blane, S.J.  Opinion by Bower, C.J.  (6 pages)

            Walter Mead appeals the dismissal of his application for postconviction relief (PCR).  OPINION HOLDS: Because Mead’s PCR application was filed more than three years after his conviction was final and he asserted no ground of fact material to his substantive claim that could not have been presented within the three-year time frame, see Iowa Code § 822.3 (2022), we affirm.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Worth County, Blake H. Norman, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Schumacher, P.J., and Ahlers and Langholz, JJ.  Opinion by Ahlers, J.  Dissent by Langholz, J.  (17 pages)

            A parent appeals the district court’s denial of her petition to modify her custody decree to allow her child to switch schools.  OPINION HOLDS:  Because the mother did not seek modification to receive sole legal custody, we affirm.  DISSENT ASSERTS:  I do not read In re Marriage of Frazier, 1 N.W.3d 775 (Iowa 2024), to remove a court’s authority to modify a school-district-setting provision in an order or decree when a party shows a material change in circumstances and the modification is in the child’s best interest.  And applying that proper standard here, I would reverse the district court’s denial of the modification request because the move to Riceville and enrollment of a half-sister in the Riceville school district is a material change in circumstances and attending the local school, with her half-sisters, less than two minutes away—rather than a twenty-five-minute car ride or an hour-plus car-and-bus trip to St. Ansgar—is in the daughter’s best interest.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Boone County, John R. Flynn, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Ahlers, P.J., and Chicchelly and Buller, JJ.  Opinion by Chicchelly, J.  (5 pages)

            Dallas Hoffman appeals his convictions after a jury found him guilty of four counts of second-degree sexual abuse.  OPINION HOLDS: Because substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdicts, we affirm Hoffman’s convictions.

            Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Michael D. Huppert, Judge.  AFFIRMED.  Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Greer and Schumacher, JJ.  Opinion by Schumacher, J. (5 pages)

            A defendant appeals his sentence.  He argues the court improperly considered only the nature of the offense in determining the sentence.  OPINION HOLDS: We determine no abuse of discretion by the district court and affirm.