Sunrise Home Health and Hospice v. Nye

2025 UT App 62

THE UTAH COURT OF APPEALS

SUNRISE HOME HEALTH & HOSPICE, LLC,
Appellant,
v.
KATRINA NYE; OHANA HOME HEALTH AND HOSPICE, LLC;
MICHAEL R. LOFGRAN; HUNTSMAN & LOFGRAN, PLLC; HUNTSMAN
& LOFGRAN HOLDINGS, LLC; CAMI LIN; STEVE LIN; BRETT HADLEY;
AND THE CUTTING EDGE INVESTMENTS, LLC,
Appellees.

Opinion
No. 20230359-CA
Filed May 1, 2025

Third District Court, Salt Lake Department
The Honorable Kent R. Holmberg
No. 150904881

Troy L. Booher, Beth E. Kennedy, and Taylor P.
Webb, Attorneys for Appellant
Patrick C. Burt, Chelsey E. Phippen, and Devin H.
Geier, Attorneys for Appellees Ohana Home Health
and Hospice, LLC; Michael R. Lofgran; Huntsman
& Lofgran, PLLC; and Huntsman & Lofgran
Holdings, LLC
Ryan B. Frazier and Zachary C. Lindley, Attorneys
for Appellees Cami Lin, Steve Lin, Brett Hadley, and
The Cutting Edge Investments, LLC

JUDGE AMY J. OLIVER authored this Opinion, in which
JUDGES GREGORY K. ORME and DAVID N. MORTENSEN concurred.

OLIVER, Judge:

¶1 Katrina Nye worked as the Nursing Director and
Taylorsville Branch Manager of Sunrise Home Health & Hospice,
Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

LLC (Sunrise). As a condition of her employment, she signed
agreements that included non-competition and non-solicitation
provisions. Despite signing these agreements, Nye proceeded to
start her own company, Ohana Home Health and Hospice, LLC
(Ohana), with the assistance of Michael Lofgran, Steve Lin
(Steve), 1 and The Cutting Edge Investments, LLC (Cutting Edge).
The district court found that Nye breached her contracts with
Sunrise and that she, Lofgran, Steve, Cutting Edge, and Ohana
were jointly liable to Sunrise for civil conspiracy and tortious
interference. The district court awarded damages of $32,491.

¶2 Sunrise argues on appeal that the district court erred in
determining the amount of damages and in dismissing its claims
against defendants Cami Lin (Cami), Brett Hadley, and
Huntsman & Lofgran, PLLC (the Firm). 2 We affirm the district
court’s decision.

BACKGROUND

Nye’s Employment with Sunrise

¶3 Nye began working for Sunrise, a home health and hospice
service, in November 2011. She was hired as the Director of
Nursing and Branch Manager for its Taylorsville branch. At the
start of her employment, she signed Sunrise’s standard
Employment Agreement (the Employment Agreement), which
included provisions addressing company property,

1. Because Steve’s wife, Cami Lin, is also a defendant in this case,
to avoid confusion, we refer to Steve and Cami Lin by their first
names, intending no disrespect in doing so.

2. Huntsman & Lofgran Holdings, LLC was dismissed at trial at
the same time as Cami, Hadley, and the Firm. Sunrise has not
contested its dismissal on appeal.

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

confidentiality, and non-solicitation. In 2013, Nye signed three
additional agreements related to an incentive and bonus program.
The Appreciation Rights Agreement (the AR Agreement)
contained a noncompete provision that supplemented the
obligations of the Employment Agreement. The Bonus
Agreement (the Bonus Agreement) provided for discretionary
bonuses. As per the Bonus Agreement, Nye received bonuses of
$10,000 almost every quarter, totaling around $100,000. At the
same time she signed the Bonus Agreement, Nye also signed “a
separate noncompete, confidentiality, and non-solicitation
agreement” (the Noncompete Agreement) by which Nye agreed
not to compete with Sunrise for one year if she left the company
and reiterated her promise not to solicit patients or employees.

¶4 While working at Sunrise, Nye began to have issues with
her taxes related to the withholdings from her paychecks. In
March 2015, Nye reached out to Lofgran, a tax attorney at the
Firm, for legal advice and assistance in resolving her tax issues.

Ohana Is Formed

¶5 After resolving the tax issues with Lofgran’s assistance,
Nye wanted to leave Sunrise and went back to the Firm to have
an attorney review the Employment Agreement, the AR
Agreement, the Bonus Agreement, and the Noncompete
Agreement to see what her options were in terms of other
employment. She met with a litigation attorney at the Firm
around March 19, 2015. The attorney talked broadly with Nye
about her options, ultimately advising her that she could
potentially get out of her agreements but not without the chance
of litigation.

¶6 In mid-April, Nye and Lofgran discussed setting up a new
home health agency where Nye would provide her nursing
expertise and Lofgran would set up any business entities needed
and provide general legal counsel to the organization.

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

¶7 After the initial discussion about creating what would
come to be Ohana, Nye sent Lofgran an email that included “a
rough summary of [Sunrise’s] income and patient numbers.”
These reports showed “the number of admissions and referrals
for [each month of] 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015” that Nye obtained from
Sunrise’s password-protected computer system, DeVero, which
maintained Sunrise’s confidential electronic medical records. Nye
was one of three employees who had the necessary password for
DeVero at any given time, apart from Matt Baker, Sunrise’s Chief
Executive Officer, and his wife. Nye gave this information to
Lofgran despite promising not to disclose the information in her
agreements and not receiving permission to do so.

Disintegration of Nye’s Relationship with Sunrise

¶8 Around the same time, Baker heard rumors that Nye was
considering breaching her noncompete agreements. Nye denied
the rumors. On April 21, 2015, Nye was placed on administrative
leave after Baker continued to hear that Nye was soliciting
Sunrise’s patients and employees. While on leave, Nye put
together a business plan for Ohana and emailed the plan to
Lofgran. Sunrise terminated Nye for cause on April 28, 2015.

¶9 Also in April, Lofgran reached out to Steve, his friend and
a client of the Firm, to see if Cutting Edge would be interested in
investing in Ohana. Steve was the point of contact for Cutting
Edge; his wife, Cami, was a member of Cutting Edge along with
Hadley. According to Steve, he and Cami were “one and the
same” for business purposes and his practice was to pass all the
information he learned about potential investments to Cami and
Hadley so they could make informed business decisions. Steve
did not forward any patient information to Cami or Hadley, and
neither Cami nor Hadley ever met or had contact with Nye.
Lofgran forwarded Nye’s business plan to Steve along with the
financial projection numbers Nye had sent him, which included
additional patient and financial information.

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

Ohana Secures Funding and Begins Operation

¶10 In early June 2015, Nye sent Lofgran an email entitled
“Potential Patients,” which listed twenty-five patients from
“Sunrise’s confidential patient list, with revenue generated by
each patient, cost associated with each patient, and each patient’s
type of care.” All patients were individuals that Nye either cared
for directly or for whom she supervised care. The revenue and
cost numbers were so close to Sunrise’s actual financial numbers
that “they could not have been deduced without having access (at
least through another employee) to Sunrise’s financial data.”
Further, the patient care information could have only “been
deduced by knowing what care the patients were actually
receiving at Sunrise, as recorded in their respective diagnoses and
care plans on their electronic medical record stored in DeVero.”
Lofgran passed this information on to Steve. Both Lofgran and
Steve recognized that the information they were sharing was
sensitive and confidential.

¶11 Lofgran then created Sour Candy, LLC (Sour Candy) with
his law partner Diana Huntsman for the sole purpose of
“acquiring an interest in Ohana.” Ultimately, Sour Candy
invested $10,000 in Ohana and was entitled to a 49% interest in
the company.

¶12 The bulk of Ohana’s funding came from Cutting Edge,
which invested $30,000. Lofgran, Steve, and Nye met at the Firm
in late April to discuss raising the necessary capital for Ohana. At
some point during or before the meeting, Lofgran told Steve about
the noncompete agreements. Steve “understood that the
noncompete agreements prevented Nye from competing with or
doing harm to Sunrise.” Though Steve knew about the
noncompete agreements, Cami testified that she was unaware of
them and that Steve had not told her about them. Hadley, on the
other hand, testified that he did know about the noncompete
agreements, but that Lofgran told him that it was a “non-issue.”

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

¶13 Acting as legal counsel for Ohana, Lofgran prepared its
articles of organization and its operating agreement. The
operating agreement intentionally left out Nye and listed only
Cutting Edge and Sour Candy as its members due to concerns that
Sunrise would take legal action against Nye for violating the
noncompete and non-solicitation terms of her agreements. Nye,
Lofgran, and Steve all understood that Nye would be added to
the operating agreement to reflect her ownership and
involvement once the legal problems had been resolved. Lofgran
also left Nye’s name off all publicly filed documents he prepared
for Ohana, including its Medicare provider application, its
business license application, and its articles of organization.

¶14 Ultimately, Ohana was a short-lived venture. It opened its
doors on July 10, 2015, and saw its first patient on July 13, 2015.
Eight patients were officially admitted, all of whom were former
Sunrise patients. Several additional Sunrise patients were in the
process of being admitted to Ohana, but Ohana shut down two
weeks later after Sunrise filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary
restraining order against Ohana. During its fourteen days of
operation, Ohana generated no income and had not yet qualified
for Medicare reimbursement.

Other Events Impacting Sunrise’s Business

¶15 Contemporaneously with Nye’s departure from Sunrise
and the creation of Ohana, Humana Health Insurance Company
(Humana) ended its contract with Sunrise. Sunrise patients were
informed on June 18, 2015, that Sunrise would cease to be a
participating provider with Humana at the start of August 2015.

¶16 In addition to changing companies for reasons of insurance
coverage, patients would often change companies to stay with
their healthcare provider, as that personal relationship was
paramount. And the home health and hospice industry in Utah
was particularly competitive during this time, with

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

approximately forty such companies operating along the Wasatch
Front.

¶17 Sunrise shut down in July 2017 after the state revoked its
business license and the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized
Sunrise’s computers and business documents. Baker was
ultimately charged with and pled guilty to federal healthcare
fraud. He was sentenced to twelve months and one day in prison
and ordered to pay $94,968.08 in restitution.

The Bench Trial

¶18 In December 2021, the court held a bench trial on the claims
brought by Sunrise against Nye, Lofgran, Ohana, Cutting Edge,
Steve, Cami, Hadley, and the Firm. 3 During the trial, Sunrise
called an expert witness (Sunrise’s Expert) to testify to damages
incurred by Sunrise due to the actions of the defendants. Sunrise’s
Expert testified that Sunrise suffered $584,211.05 in lost profit
damages. He used the “historical revenue per day” for each
patient until the end of 2016 to calculate the lost profit damages
for each patient.

¶19 In contrast, defendants’ expert witness (Defendants’
Expert) testified that Sunrise only suffered zero to $32,491 in lost
profit damages. He used the same historical revenue per day for
each patient but used an average length of stay of 180 days based
on his discussions with Nye—who knew the patients and told
him that she felt that the 180-day timeframe was a reasonable
estimate—to calculate lost profit damages attributable to each
patient. He then reduced the lost profit damages by 75% based on
Baker’s testimony about the cancellation of the Humana contract.
Baker’s testimony at issue is as follows:

3. The complaint named several other defendants who were later
dismissed and whose dismissal is not before us on appeal.

20230359-CA 7 2025 UT App 62
Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

Q. How many patients did you have that were on
Humana right before this cancelation in April—
April of 2015 to be clear?

A. I believe, roughly, we had somewhere in the
range of 20 to 30.

Q. 20 to 30. And how many of those have you
actually lost as a result—well , how many of those
have you lost?

A. That are no longer receiving services from
Sunrise?

Q. Correct.

A. As a percentage or—

Q. Percentage would be fine.

A. Probably roughly 75 percent of those.

Q. Has that loss affected Sunrise’s profitability?

A. It has.

¶20 Sunrise’s Expert testified that he understood Baker to be
saying that those Humana patients left in large part because of the
defendants’ actions, not that Sunrise lost 75% of the patients
because Humana ended its contract. Defendants’ Expert, in
contrast, testified that it was “very clear” to him that Baker meant
that patients left Sunrise due to the end of the Humana contract,
as Baker made no reference to Nye in his testimony.

¶21 At the conclusion of the bench trial, the district court found
that Nye breached her agreements with Sunrise by (1) violating
her promise not to disclose confidential information in the

20230359-CA 8 2025 UT App 62
Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

Employment Agreement, (2) breaching her promise made in the
Employment Agreement and Noncompete Agreement not to
solicit patients and employees, and (3) breaching her promise not
to compete with Sunrise in the AR agreement and Noncompete
Agreement. The district court also found that Sunrise suffered lost
profit damages of which Nye was the proximate cause. The
district court adopted Defendants’ Expert’s view of damages and
awarded $32,491.

¶22 Regarding the other defendants, the district court
concluded that Nye, Lofgran, Ohana, Steve, and Cutting Edge
were jointly and severally liable to Sunrise for committing civil
conspiracy and tortious interference in the same amount of
$32,491. It dismissed Sunrise’s claims against Cami and Hadley
because Sunrise did not meet its burden of proof in demonstrating
by clear and convincing evidence that they were part of the
conspiracy. The district court also dismissed Sunrise’s vicarious
liability claim against the Firm, finding that Sunrise did not
demonstrate that Lofgran was acting as an agent of the Firm. The
district court awarded Sunrise “a joint and several judgment” in
the amount of $32,491.

Post-trial Motion to Alter or Amend the Judgment

¶23 Sunrise filed a post-trial motion to alter or amend the
judgment, arguing that the district court erred in calculating the
damages award based on 180-day average stays and in reducing
the damages by 75% due to the loss of the Humana contract. It
further argued that the court erred in dismissing Sunrise’s claims
against Cami, Hadley, and the Firm. The district court denied the
motion.

20230359-CA 9 2025 UT App 62
Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

ISSUES AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW

¶24 Sunrise raises several challenges to the district court’s
damages award. “Whether the amount awarded by the district
court was supported by the evidence is a determination of fact
that may be reversed on appeal only if clearly erroneous.”
Diversified Striping Sys. Inc. v. Kraus, 2022 UT App 91, ¶ 42, 516
P.3d 306 (cleaned up).

¶25 Sunrise also challenges the district court’s dismissal of the
conspiracy claims against the Firm and Cutting Edge members
Cami and Hadley under rule 52(e) of the Utah Rules of Civil
Procedure, which presents a mixed question of law and fact.
“[W]e review a district court’s interpretation and application of
our rules of civil procedure for correctness.” Sanders v. Sanders,
2021 UT App 122, ¶ 4, 502 P.3d 1230. However, when an appellant
challenges a district court’s underlying factual findings in making
a legal determination, “we will not disturb the court’s findings of
fact unless they are clearly erroneous.” Hale v. Big H Constr., Inc.,
2012 UT App 283, ¶ 13, 288 P.3d 1046 (cleaned up).

ANALYSIS

I. Damages

¶26 Sunrise argues that the “district court erred in calculating
Sunrise’s lost profits damages . . . by relying on reductions
imposed by” Defendants’ Expert that were not “supported by the
evidence.” Specifically, Sunrise asserts that the district court erred
in (1) reducing Sunrise’s claimed damages based on a 180-day
average stay calculation, (2) reducing Sunrise’s claimed damages
by 75%, and (3) failing to include in the damages calculation the
patients that left Sunrise for Ohana but did not receive care from
Ohana.

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

¶27 In a bench trial where the district court serves as fact finder,
“the court has considerable discretion to assign relative weight to
the evidence before it, including the right to minimize or even
disregard certain evidence.” SA Group Props. Inc. v. Highland
Marketplace LC, 2017 UT App 160, ¶ 24, 424 P.3d 187 (cleaned up).
Indeed, the district court “is in the best position to judge the
credibility of witnesses and is free to disbelieve their testimony,
even if that testimony comes from an expert witness.” Id. (cleaned
up).

Attacking [the] credibility and weight
determinations of a fact finder, such as a judge in a
bench trial, presents a significant hurdle for any
appellant, particularly as it pertains to expert
witnesses. Because the weight to be given to the
testimony is within the province of the finder of fact,
we will not second guess a court’s decisions about
evidentiary weight and credibility if there is a
reasonable basis in the record to support them.

Id. (cleaned up). And if there is more than one possible
interpretation of the evidence, the district court “has significant
discretion to assign relative weight to the evidence before it.” Id.
(cleaned up). As explained below, we see no clear error by the
district court in calculating Sunrise’s damages.

A. 180-Day Average Stay

¶28 Sunrise argues that the district court clearly erred in
adopting Defendants’ Expert’s assumption that patients would
have stayed at Sunrise for 180 days because 180 days is the
industry average for hospice patients, not home health patients.
Sunrise notes that the patients who left Sunrise had chronic
conditions that would require care for the rest of their lives and
that using a 180-day average was unnecessary given that “it was
undisputed that two of the patients died in 2016, and that the

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

other nine remained alive” at the end of 2016, when Sunrise’s
Expert ended his analysis. Sunrise further asserts that the “record
was clear” that the patients who left Sunrise for Ohana “were
home long-term care patients, not hospice patients.” Sunrise thus
argues that the district court should have adopted Sunrise’s
Expert’s view that the proper calculation of damages was the
lifetime of the patients. But the evidence before the district court
on this issue was not as clear as Sunrise claims.

¶29 First, there was no actual data on how long these particular
patients would have stayed with Sunrise because they all left to
join Nye at Ohana. And Sunrise acknowledges that there was no
evidence presented about Sunrise’s historical averages for a
patient’s length of stay. Because no party presented such
evidence, it was up to the district court to “choose between
experts as to relative credibility” and to believe or “disbelieve all
the expert testimony placed before it—provided it can articulate
a reasonable basis for doing so.” Woodward v. Lafranca, 2016 UT
App 141, ¶ 13, 381 P.3d 1125 (cleaned up).

¶30 The district court found numerous problems with the
opinion of Sunrise’s Expert, including his “failure to account for
intervening factors” that may have impacted Sunrise’s profits
such as the termination of the Humana contract, Baker’s
conviction for healthcare fraud, and Sunrise’s forced closure. The
district court also found that the opinion of Sunrise’s Expert that
the patients would have had an “indefinite length of stay” until
their death was both “unreasonable and without sufficient
support.” In contrast, the district court did not find the same
credibility issues with Defendants’ Expert’s testimony. It found
that Defendants’ Expert’s position on calculating an average
length of stay was “well supported” by the evidence.

¶31 Though Sunrise argues that Defendants’ Expert was
mistaken because he got the 180-day time frame from the industry
average for hospice patients and not home health patients, the

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

record does not support this contention. The district court noted
that Defendants’ Expert based his 180-day estimate on Nye’s
opinion about these particular patients and on “his general
knowledge of the home health industry.” In fact, Defendants’
Expert was clear in response to Sunrise’s questions that his use of
180 days was not based on it being a hospice industry standard:

Q. And despite that you based your 180 days on an
average of hospice and home health care patients as
well as what Ms. Nye was telling you?

A. No, it wasn’t based on hospice. I looked to that as a
reasonableness check but Ms. Nye, for these
patients, said 180 days would be a reasonable figure
to use.

Q. Okay, I must have misunderstood your previous
testimony that you were relying on hospice
numbers. Let me ask you, you applied this 180-day
number to each of these patients, correct?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And I assume your rationale for that is the same,
that this is either what you gathered from the
industry or what Ms. Nye had told you?

A. Yes.

(Emphasis added.)

¶32 Ultimately, the district court was presented with two
different methods for calculating damages offered by competing
experts. Because Sunrise did not present any historical averages
for the length of stay for any of its patients, the experts necessarily
had to rely on other information to quantify the financial impact
of the departure of these particular patients. Sunrise’s Expert

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

assumed that these patients would have remained at Sunrise until
their deaths (many years later) had Nye not recruited them away
to Ohana. Defendants’ Expert, on the other hand, relied upon
Nye’s own assessment that a 180-day average was reasonable for
these particular patients and that this time frame was in line with
his assessment of the industry.

¶33 It was thus within the district court’s discretion to
determine which expert was more credible and which time
frame—the patients’ life spans or 180 days—was more in line with
the evidence before it. “We will not second guess a court’s
decisions about evidentiary weight and credibility if there is a
reasonable basis in the record to support them.” SA Group Props.
Inc. v. Highland Marketplace LC, 2017 UT App 160, ¶ 24, 424 P.3d
187 (cleaned up). Here, the district court had no historical average
length of stay to consider, there was evidence before the court that
the home health and hospice industry in Utah was particularly
competitive and that patients often changed companies to stay
with their healthcare provider, and Nye identified 180 days as
reasonable for these patients. Thus, the district court’s reduction
of Sunrise’s damages based on a 180-day calculation as the
average length of stay was not clearly erroneous.

B. Reduction of Damages by 75%

¶34 Sunrise argues that the district court clearly erred in
reducing Sunrise’s lost profits by 75% based on Defendants’
Expert’s “assumption that 75% of the patients who left with Nye
would have left, regardless of Nye’s conduct, because Sunrise was
losing its contract with Humana.” According to Sunrise, there was
“no evidence to support that assumption.” We disagree.

¶35 Defendants’ Expert formed his opinion by relying on the
testimony provided by Baker about the impact on Sunrise of the
loss of the Humana contract. Baker testified that “roughly 75
percent” of the Humana patients were no longer receiving

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

services from Sunrise. Sunrise’s Expert interpreted Baker’s
testimony differently, understanding Baker to attribute the loss of
75% of the Human patients to Nye’s recruitment of those patients
to Ohana. “When the evidence is susceptible to more than one
interpretation, the [district] court, as the fact finder, is to consider
the evidence and has significant discretion to assign relative
weight to the evidence before it.” See SA Group Props. Inc., 2017
UT App 160, ¶ 24 (cleaned up)). Thus, the district court was free
to consider for itself what Baker’s testimony meant and it was also
free to believe or disbelieve the conflicting expert views of Baker’s
testimony.

¶36 Therefore, the district court’s decision to agree with and
follow Defendants’ Expert’s interpretation of Baker’s testimony to
mean that Sunrise lost 75% of the Humana patients due to the
Humana contract—and to reduce the damages accordingly—was
not clearly erroneous.

C. Additional Patients

¶37 Finally, Sunrise argues the district court clearly erred in its
damages calculation by not including the patients who left
Sunrise for Ohana but never received care from Ohana. 4 We agree
with appellees that this issue was not properly preserved for
appeal.

¶38 For an issue to be preserved for appeal, the parties must
“have raised and argued before the district court the issue that
they raise and argue before us on appeal, and if a party does not,
it has failed to preserve the issue.” True v. Utah Dep’t of Transp.,
2018 UT App 86, ¶ 23, 427 P.3d 338 (cleaned up). An issue is only

4. There appears to be some confusion in the record as to how
many patients actually left Sunrise for Ohana but did not receive
care from Ohana. Because we find this issue is unpreserved, we
need not resolve this discrepancy.

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preserved for appeal if it “has been presented to the [district] court
in such a way that the [district] court has an opportunity to rule
on it.” Id. ¶ 24 (cleaned up). The district court “has the
opportunity to rule [on an issue] if the following three
requirements are met: (1) the issue must be raised in a timely
fashion; (2) the issue must be specifically raised; and (3) a party
must introduce supporting evidence or relevant legal authority.”
Searle v. Searle, 2001 UT App 367, ¶ 17, 38 P.3d 307 (cleaned up).

¶39 In its opening brief, Sunrise argued that it preserved the
issue of the additional patients both in its post-trial motion to alter
or amend the judgment and at trial. However, in its post-trial
motion, Sunrise presented only two arguments: (1) the district
court erred by limiting the damages to a 180-day period and (2)
the district court erred by reducing damages by 75% due to the
loss of the Humana contract. When appellees pointed out this
omission, Sunrise conceded in its reply brief that the additional
patient issue was not raised in the post-trial motion. But Sunrise
maintained that it raised the issue at trial and therefore it has been
preserved. Specifically, Sunrise argued that it preserved the issue
by presenting it to the district court in its proposed findings of fact
and conclusions of law (submitted in lieu of closing arguments),
and, thus, that it was “squarely before the court at trial.” And, in
Sunrise’s view, because it raised the issue in its proposed findings,
it did not need to raise the issue in its post-trial motion because
“preservation does not require a preserved issue to be reasserted
in a post-trial motion.”

¶40 In support of this reasoning, Sunrise cites Clark v. Clark,
2023 UT App 111, 537 P.3d 633. In Clark, this court noted that
when “the district court direct[s] the parties to submit proposed
findings of fact and conclusions of law in lieu of closing
arguments,” an argument made there is “preserved for our
review.” Id. ¶ 36 n.3. However, even though an argument can be
preserved if presented to the district court in proposed findings
of fact and conclusions of law, the legal argument must still be

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

presented to the district court in such a way that it can rule on it.
See Searle, 2001 UT App 367, ¶ 17. Sunrise did not do so here.

¶41 The only mention Sunrise made in its proposed findings of
fact regarding this issue was that Defendants’ Expert’s “own
opinion on damages is fundamentally flawed at the outset,
because he includes only five patients in his analysis, despite
purportedly relying on Nye’s deposition, which acknowledges
nine Sunrise patients that were either admitted at Ohana or
attempted to be admitted.” And in its proposed conclusions of
law, Sunrise included only a single paragraph on damages that
adopted its own expert’s opinion in full, which included damages
for “11 patients.”

¶42 Sunrise did not make any legal argument regarding why
Defendants’ Expert’s reliance on five patients instead of nine
patients was improper. It merely outlined a factual difference
between Sunrise’s Expert’s opinion and Defendants’ Expert’s
opinion, which does not equate to preserving a distinct legal issue.
This is especially true when considering that the bulk of the 50
proposed findings of fact on damages focused on whether 180
days was the proper measure of damages and the effect of the loss
of the Humana contract, while only a single paragraph noted that
Defendants’ Expert relied upon a lesser number of patients. Thus,
this one proposed factual finding (out of a total of 295) was not
enough for the district court to know it was being specifically
asked to rule on the legal issue of whether the patients who left
for Ohana but did not receive care from Ohana should be included
in the damages calculation. See id.

¶43 Accordingly, Sunrise did not raise with the district court
the legal issue it now raises on appeal—that the damages did not
account for the patients who left Sunrise for Ohana but did not
receive care from Ohana because their enrollment was still in
process when Ohana shut down. Because this issue was not

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presented to the district court, it was not preserved for appeal and
we do not address it.

II. Dismissal of Civil Conspiracy Claims

¶44 Sunrise argues that the district court erred in dismissing its
civil conspiracy claims against the Firm, Cami, and Hadley under
rule 52(e) of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure. But because we
affirm the district court’s ruling on damages, we do not need to
reach the dismissals of the conspiracy claims as the issues are now
moot.

¶45 At the end of the trial, the district court found that Nye,
Ohana, Lofgran, Steve, and Cutting Edge were jointly and
severally liable to Sunrise for $32,491. Sunrise asks us to reverse
the district court’s dismissal of claims against three additional
defendants and impose liability on them. But doing so would not
alter the ultimate judgment in the case because even if the Firm,
Cami, and Hadley were also liable to Sunrise, all the defendants
would remain jointly and severally liable. And the fact that only
joint and several liability would be incurred by these three
defendants is inconsequential as concerns Sunrise because the
judgment has already been paid in full.

¶46 Although this precise issue has not been addressed in
Utah, we find the Idaho Supreme Court’s holding on a similar
issue compelling. In Stephen v. Sallaz & Gatewood, Chartered, 248
P.3d 1256 (Idaho 2011), the district court had found a law firm and
one of its attorneys liable for malpractice, while finding the other
attorney sued was not liable. Id. at 1259. On appeal, the appellant
argued that the other attorney was personally liable for
malpractice as well. Id. at 1263. In response to this argument, the
Idaho Supreme Court held that because the appellant had already
been paid the full amount of the judgment below, “any ruling on
this issue would have no practical effect” and therefore the issue
was moot. Id. Such is the case here. A judicial determination that

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Sunrise Home Health v. Nye

the Firm, Cami, and Hadley are liable for conspiracy “would have
no practical effect upon the outcome because the judgment has
already been paid and satisfied.” Id. (cleaned up). Thus, we
decline to address this issue as it is moot. 5

CONCLUSION

¶47 We detect no clear error on the part of the district court in
calculating the amount of damages, and Sunrise failed to preserve
its challenge to the district court’s determination of the number of
patients to include in the damages calculation. We conclude that
the dismissal of the civil conspiracy claims against the Firm, Cami,
and Hadley is moot. Thus, we affirm the district court’s decision.

5. Sunrise also argues that it is entitled to attorney fees in
connection with this appeal. Because Sunrise does not prevail in
its appeal, we do not award it attorney fees.

20230359-CA 19 2025 UT App 62