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| Yes? I was told to stay. |
By Andrew Delaney
This case explores the parameters of a stay. In law, a “stay” isn’t a command you give to Rover; it’s a hold on further proceedings. Stays can be granted for lots of reasons—maybe there’s a case pending in another court that will resolve a key issue in the case. Or maybe one of the parties is sick. To bring this into current events, the coronavirus could be a reason for a stay. Or the parties could just agree that a stay is a good idea and agree to one while they explore options. Anyway, there are plenty of reasons that one or more parties in a case might want to hit the pause button.
This case is about a Vermont law against high-capacity gun magazines. Until today, I was not aware such a law existed. It’s fairly recent and some folks (a couple nonprofits, a business and some individuals) challenged the law as unconstitutional based on the Vermont Constitution’s analogue to the Second Amendment.
The defendants (including the Director of the Vermont State Police, the Attorney General of Vermont, and several county state’s attorneys) moved to dismiss the complaint and plaintiffs moved for summary judgment. “Hold up,” said the trial court. “Both motions are denied. Let’s develop a factual record before the court rules on your arguments.”
Before discovery was complete, SCOV accepted a criminal appeal dealing with the same question—whether the new law is unconstitutional under Vermont’s Constitution. Both sides moved to appeal on report of the question. Full disclosure: I don’t know what the hell that means. As best I can tell from the context, it means that the parties wanted to report the case to SCOV and presumably consolidate the criminal and civil cases in some manner. I could be wrong, but that seems about right. At the same time, the defense took a little detour and also moved for a stay. The defense argued that the cases presented identical legal issues and therefore, it was a potential waste of resources to go forward with finishing discovery and trial if the other case would resolve the issues. “Woah,” said the plaintiffs, “Slow your roll. We’re only cool with a stay if the court grants the joint motion to appeal.”
The trial court denied both motions. Again, it was—like the previous motion to dismiss and the motion for summary judgment—because the factual record was undeveloped. The criminal case had a far different factual context and the facts in this case weren’t developed enough, in the court’s opinion, to kick it up to SCOV. The motion for a stay was denied without an explanation, but on defendants’ motion for reconsideration, the trial court explained that it was the lack of a developed factual record that warranted denying the stay.
The defense appeals the trial court’s denial of its motion for a stay. There’s some procedural stuff that’s not that exciting. We’re going to skip over that. The case makes it to SCOV on this point and that’s what you really need to know.
SCOV reviews denial of a stay for abuse of discretion. The defense here would have had a shot with the no-explanation denial (because no identified basis for exercising discretion can be abuse of that discretion), but SCOV notes that the explanation on reconsideration cures that defect.
SCOV notes: “The trial court’s rationale for denying the stay was that factual development was needed for its resolution of this case and should not be delayed.” Here, SCOV can’t conclude that the trial court’s reasoning was an abuse of discretion.
SCOV notes that the defendants put forward sufficient evidence to support a stay, and a stay would have been within the trial court’s discretion. But denial of the stay falls within that same broad range of discretion. This was not a definitive one-way-or-the-other decision (not to be confused with Blondie’s way of finding and getting you).
SCOV concludes: “It was not an abuse of discretion for the court to conclude that none of the factors asserted by defendants—including litigation costs to the State and judicial economy—outweigh plaintiffs’ interests. The trial court was within its discretion to deny defendants’ motion.”
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