[{"_1":2,"_88":-5,"_89":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_26":27},"root",{"_5":6,"_17":10,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":10,"_23":-5,"_24":-5,"_25":10},"user",{"_7":8,"_9":10,"_11":10,"_12":-5,"_13":-5,"_14":15,"_16":-5},"roles",[],"isAuthenticated",false,"isPremium","planName","subscriptionStatus","featureFlags",{},"insightsBudget","isDevelopmentHost","userPreferences",{},"recaptchaSiteKey","6LcvOJcUAAAAAHsB-gPGfGktcRlKpH7OTIU_dMTD","isImpersonating","impersonation","affiliateStatus","isFreedomPortal","routes/v2/article/layout",{"_28":29,"_30":31},"notFound",true,"relatedArticles",[32,76],{"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":60,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},"mediaId",5974934,"mediaKeyId","5829777-b35a1b8c59f26f97552ea4740588a3ab","parentId",5829777,"title","Appeals court weighs late expert disclosures and property tracing under prenup in Paulson divorce appeal","audioSeconds",3934,"startMs",4460000,"endMs",8394000,"viewUrl","/Search/View?dp=1&key=5829777-b35a1b8c59f26f97552ea4740588a3ab&start=4460&end=8394","thumbnailUrl","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/5829777-b35a1b8c59f26f97552ea4740588a3ab/thumbnail_4460000.jpg","articleUrl","/articles/5974934/Utah/Appeals-court-weighs-late-expert-disclosures-and-property-tracing-under-prenup-in-Paulson-divorce-appeal","mediaUrl","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/5974934-add3f81bd6377b99f27d287cbd4dc752/orig.mp4?Expires=1770501744&Signature=l5su765REFs1mkmVyxKJM1SJUfhuWL4z9uglE0RLsbQprybz2gHgZ1m~La6t-cIsaMXCH5v9vVYHDXHE5iWB-8f1mCm6HthbAb~lEVQb8~r9gIqJw8puJg2o2XFWXXYzjSZt2G3DAgqmk7cqb98boPU6bBaSs-ubrbON8B5rK-5B5SAr4vN1eccuDXdzkHqJ7pku80K8-f4ynBwhS6~WUctEFbAWAeEPWLD~KxyVlHknULaA-HmcJfDvAotfnGXLMd-BqN-PrpibREDOdsqPz7Lk~FSfkfaT-Ao0zvTDbidlF1NpeJVstphn83fXW3NsC6DfUKToGqogUc6rrENkyw__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","author","Utah Court of Appeals","date","2025-09-25T00:00:00Z","article","The Utah Court of Appeals heard argument in Paulson v. Paulson over two central areas: whether the trial court properly excluded a late rebuttal expert opinion in an alimony dispute, and whether the trial court correctly distributed property under a prenuptial agreement that the parties and the judge analyzed using California transmutation and tracing doctrines.

Rodney Parker, counsel for Christopher Paulson, argued that the rebuttal expert disclosure for Townsend was a practical use of Rule 26’s allowance for “opinions expected” when rebuttal work must be done quickly. Parker said the timing — roughly three weeks between disclosure and the fuller report — and the realities of litigation during the COVID era meant counsel had limited time to obtain subpoena returns and finalize an expert report. He emphasized that the alleged harm to Trisha Paulson from the late disclosure was self-inflicted because her counsel had elected to file a summary-judgment motion rather than depose or insist on a full expert report first. “That harm can be remedied,” Parker told the panel, arguing courts should avoid excluding opinions where prejudice can be cured by a deposition or limited reopening of discovery.

Julie Nelson, counsel for Trisha Paulson, told the court the rule-26 exclusion was within the trial court’s discretion because Townsend’s disclosure gave only topic-level information and not the summaries the rule requires, and the district judge found the disclosure did not permit meaningful cross-examination before expert discovery closed. Nelson also stressed the court’s prior cases — including Bodell and RJW Media cited in the briefing — where courts found prejudice when new expert theories appeared after discovery deadlines. She argued the exclusion was not merely procedural but that the late and incomplete disclosure “sandbagged” petitioner's case and that reopening expert discovery would have been substantial and disruptive.

The panel also heard extended argument on property division. Parker contended that many assets were Christopher’s separate property when acquired, that title sometimes sat in only his name or in both names as a matter of convenience, and that the prenuptial agreement’s language (section 3.01 and 3.03) reserved certain proceeds as separate. He disputed the trial court’s use of recapitulation-style exhaustion tracing across the entire marriage and said the court misapplied California law when it treated long-term commingling as sufficient to convert all assets.

Nelson replied that the prenup’s transmutation clause (section 7) and California law required the trial court to look to whether written transmutation occurred before applying presumptions about joint title. She told the panel that the court correctly applied exhaustion tracing to several accounts and that direct tracing supported other awards. Nelson cited California authority (the court’s opinion cited Bovino and more recent decisions) holding that transmutation rules must be addressed before presuming joint title and that exhaustion tracing can be appropriate if the record shows year-by-year income and expenditures.

Judges asked several procedural and remedial questions. One judge asked whether, if exclusion of Townsend effectively foreclosed the alimony claim, the trial court should have used a lesser sanction. Counsel debated whether exclusion here was tantamount to dismissal, citing the Utah Supreme Court’s Corollis opinion and the Bodell line of cases. The panel also questioned how the court should handle claimed preservation failures and when it is appropriate to remand for fact-finding versus resolving legal questions on the appellate record.

On disqualification, counsel discussed a contention that a judge had not disclosed a prior representation by a lawyer at a firm that later became involved in the case. The presiding judge at the trial-court level had denied a disqualification request and the appeals briefing argued both appearance and actual-conflict standards. Counsel told the appeals panel that the presiding judge found no appearance of bias and that some procedural choices (including timing of the disqualification filing) influenced the trial-court rulings.

Why it matters: The questions raised affect routine family-law practice: how strictly courts may apply expert-disclosure deadlines, whether exclusion is an appropriate remedy versus reopening discovery, and how prenups and state tracing rules interact when spouses commingle funds over decades. The case also highlights how federal- and state-style discovery timetables and pandemic-era delays can complicate expert disclosures and case management.

Ending: The panel took the arguments under advisement and said it would issue a written decision addressing the interplay of Rule 26 standards, harmlessness/prejudice, and the trial court’s application of California transmutation and tracing doctrines to the distribution of property.
","mediaType","Video","parentTitle","20220914- Paulson v. Paulson audio file","oneSentenceSummary","During oral argument in Christopher Paulson v. Trisha Paulson, counsel debated whether a late rebuttal expert disclosure justified exclusion under Rule 26 and whether the trial court correctly applied California transmutation and exhaustion-tracing principles to distribute property created or acquired during a long-term marriage.","taxTitle","Utah Court of Appeals Live Stream, Utah Appellate Court, Utah Judicial Branch, Utah","taxId",76036,"location","Utah","headline","","shortSummary",{"_33":77,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":78,"_41":79,"_43":80,"_45":81,"_47":82,"_49":83,"_51":84,"_53":85,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":86,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":87,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},5974939,"Court of Appeals hears dispute over deferred compensation, damages and attorney fees in CWS v. Montgomery",3311,749000,4060000,"/Search/View?dp=1&key=5829777-b35a1b8c59f26f97552ea4740588a3ab&start=749&end=4060","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/5829777-b35a1b8c59f26f97552ea4740588a3ab/thumbnail_749000.jpg","/articles/5974939/Utah/Court-of-Appeals-hears-dispute-over-deferred-compensation-damages-and-attorney-fees-in-CWS-v-Montgomery","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/5974939-5c972bc3bb9bb26f7b86810b83ed0605/orig.mp4?Expires=1770501744&Signature=gkAQh3JeCG9HWi~zYshSEua~r4q873KVCAqV4rUkuXR33NYbLPhIm89-YccZtSzxZYJi~qQk73AlAAvjPvD8M8EBGAqFVkCoaZAQ~bC8JfYkX0BDpncCzJid7sFy4b3YW2CF9AaPNM1ZumV~6o7lCA-W1ggk07hc8s~xY8VKFR9HwZSqBYxt3A-XxVCf39oCC3dHbG~2myIuYwG-yf4M7UpxwOo4csjI6tewqX0RalAq~wBqHyEik-JbBFbV7ko-SSn4lhPphGGm9HQLlQu-piJb5gV42TnJYaeJTDHFhiHROyqOPcHUzPODM88a9mkQFONLJduoQcdkldpVR7CVqg__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","The Utah Court of Appeals heard oral argument in CWS v. Montgomery on matters including whether the operating agreement allowed the company manager to defer salary and bonuses, whether factual disputes should have barred summary judgment, and whether the district court correctly calculated prejudgment interest and attorney-fee awards.

At argument, Beth Ranshaw, counsel for appellant and cross-appellee CWS, told the three-judge panel that the district court mischaracterized CWS’s position by treating the dispute as one only about the amount of compensation rather than the fact of compensation itself. “The plain language of the agreement simply did not allow for a deferred compensation that Mr. Montgomery requested,” Ranshaw said, arguing the operating agreement’s reserved-actions provision limited a manager from changing terms of employment or compensation without approval of owners holding more than 50% of ownership interest. She noted Montgomery held roughly 45% and never a majority.

Ranshaw added that Exhibit B to the operating agreement specified payroll timing and quarterly bonus procedures, and that those timing provisions were part of the contract’s terms: “The operating agreement makes clear. It does not merely define the amount of compensation. It also defines when compensation was supposed to occur,” she said. She told the court that, based on Montgomery’s deferral over 12 years, the company now faced a near $2,000,000 liability the parties had not contemplated and that summary judgment in Montgomery’s favor was improper because material fact disputes remained.

Counsel for Montgomery, Eric Olsen, argued the district court reached the correct result and that CWS had preserved only a narrow argument below. Olsen told the panel CWS presented its challenge in two short paragraphs in its summary-judgment opposition and therefore could not expand theories on appeal. He also argued that even if a technical breach occurred when Montgomery deferred compensation it was nonmaterial because CWS did not show it suffered damages from that deferred pay: “They never argued below that it caused them to suffer any harm at all,” Olsen said. He urged the court to affirm summary judgment on Montgomery’s counterclaim and to vacate or revise the trial court’s prejudgment-interest and fee rulings.

The parties disputed several legal points during questioning from the panel. Ranshaw told the court that, under Larson v. Stauffer, Montgomery bore a prima facie burden to show he substantially performed under the operating agreement and that the jury’s findings on the noncompete and other breaches created factual tensions the district court did not resolve. Olsen responded that the manager language delegated broad financial discretion and that the contract language could be read to allow the claimed conduct or to be ambiguous, in which case the court should avoid a construction that functions as a forfeiture.

Both sides spent time on post-judgment calculations. Ranshaw questioned the form of the amended judgment, asking why the trial court entered separate favorable figures for each side rather than a single net judgment; she said a net judgment would have aided clarity for prejudgment interest and prevailing-party analysis. Olsen countered that the jury’s award was largely discretionary and that a judge cannot reliably reconstruct the jury’s math from a special-verdict form that did not ask the jury for itemized dates or computations; for that reason he said the prejudgment-interest award on the jury verdict should be reversed. Counsel also argued about attorney-fee allocation: Montgomery asked the court to find CWS failed to prove it was the prevailing party, while CWS maintained the district court’s fee ruling was within discretion because the judgment and jury verdict supported fee entitlement under the contract’s fee provision.

The judges asked multiple questions about ambiguity, preservation, and whether the district court’s summary-judgment reasoning could be implied where the written order did not expressly address certain contract-language points. Ranshaw emphasized statutory- and contract-based limits on unilateral manager actions, cited the operating agreement’s reserved-action list (section 5.1) and the integration clause (section 9.5) to argue any change required written consent, and stressed statute-of-limitations and accrual issues because Exhibit B tied salary payments to regular payroll intervals.

Olsen urged deference where the district court found no preserved, supported theory of harm connected to the deferred-pay conduct and said the appellate court may affirm for any correct reason supported by the record. He also asked the panel to either reverse the prejudgment-interest computation and fee award or remand with directions for the trial court to explain its calculations and allocations.

The panel did not rule at argument. The judges noted the parties’ briefing and told counsel they would take the matter under advisement and render a written decision.

Why it matters: The appeal turns on how courts construe operating-agreement clauses that allocate managerial authority and on the proper standard to resolve disputes the parties say are legal (contract interpretation) versus factual (amounts, calculations, and accrual dates). The outcome could affect how managers and minority owners document compensation and how trial courts handle mixed jury verdicts with overlapping awards and fee claims.

What the record shows: Counsel identified specific contract provisions and raised discrete legal standards (substantial performance, accrual under the statute of limitations, and reserved action clauses). The transcript reflects disagreement about whether the district court mischaracterized briefing and whether the record supports reversal. The Court of Appeals said it would issue a written opinion.

Ending: The court took the case under advisement; a written decision will follow.
","At oral argument, counsel for CWS and for Scott Montgomery disputed whether the operating agreement allowed Montgomery to defer salary and bonuses, whether summary judgment was appropriate given factual disputes, and how the trial court calculated prejudgment interest and attorney fees after a mixed jury verdict.","actionData","errors"]

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Appeals court weighs late expert disclosures and property tracing under prenup in Paulson divorce appeal

Court of Appeals hears dispute over deferred compensation, damages and attorney fees in CWS v. Montgomery