Content
This page will link you to brief summaries of recently decided opinions to be published by the New Mexico Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. These summaries will inform you of opinions before they are published in the State Bar Bulletin. The summaries are grouped by month and divided into civil and criminal categories. They are kept on this site for the four most recent months.

Do not rely on these summaries for either accuracy or completeness, but rather for prompt notice of newly decided cases. A lawyer at the Court of Appeals prepares the summaries for her purposes and graciously allows their use here. The Judicial Education Center does not edit the summaries.

Note that if the Supreme Court reverses the Court of Appeals, the summary of the Supreme Court opinion will repeat the prior Court of Appeals summary and indicate the higher court’s action.

Timeliness
While these cases are usually prepared within a day or two of the date of decision, vacations or the press of other business may cause unannounced delays. You should not rely on the timeliness of these summaries.

Additional Source of Summaries
For an unofficial digest of New Mexico appellate cases (2004-date) arranged by subject, as prepared by an attorney in private practice, see "Digest of New Mexico Appellate Cases" on the University of New Mexico Law School Library website. These case summaries are not affiliated with the courts or the Judicial Education Center.

Full Opinions - Online
Effective August 31, 2005, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals post their slip opinions to their web sites shortly after the opinions are filed. You can find the opinions at the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals websites.

Full Opinions - Hard Copy
If a case interests you, you can get a hard copy of the full opinion from the appropriate Clerk of the court. The policy of the Clerks of both courts is to provide copies of opinions free of charge to members of the judiciary. Others may go to the respective court clerk’s office and borrow an opinion for a few minutes to copy it.

Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals Clerk’s office has two locations where you can briefly borrow opinions for copying.

Santa Fe:
237 Don Gaspar Avenue
827-4925
The Supreme Court library (located in the same building) has facilities for copying.

Albuquerque:
1117 Stanford NE
841-4618
The University of New Mexico Law Library (located next to the Court of Appeals office) has facilities for copying.

Supreme Court. The Supreme Court Clerk’s office has one location, at 237 Don Gaspar Avenue, 827-4860. The Supreme Court library (located in the same building) has facilities for copying.

PLEASE NOTE. The following notice applies to each Supreme Court opinion made available prior to release for publication:

NOTICE: THIS OPINION HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE PERMANENT LAW REPORTS. UNTIL RELEASED, IT IS SUBJECT TO REVISION OR WITHDRAWAL. UNTIL RELEASED FOR PUBLICATION THIS OPINION SHALL NOT BE CITED IN ANY COURT. See Weinstein v. City of Santa Fe, ___ N.M. ___, 916 P.2d 1313 (1996); Rule 12-405(C) NMRA 1996.

Civil Cases: October 2008 (most recent cases listed first)

NOTE: AS OF OCTOBER 20, 2008, THE COURT HAS DECIDED TO INDEFINITELY SUSPEND THE PUBLICATION OF CASE SUMMARIES.

Pena Blanca Partnership v. San Jose de Hernandez Community Ditch, CA 28,005 (Kennedy) Oct 20, 2008
Section 73-2-21(E), which provides an arbitrary and capricious standard of review in appeals to district court from decisions of ditch commissioners, does not violate either article XVI, section 5 (providing that decisions of state executive officers or bodies shall proceed on appeal de novo unless otherwise provided by law) or article II, section 18 (providing that equal protection shall not be denied) because the section is law that provides otherwise and because the legislature could rationally determine that decisions of ditch commissioners should be given more deference; issue of takings, vagueness, or due process not reached in this interlocutory appeal reviewing the decision of the district court, which decided only the two issues of standard of review and equal protection.

Marchand v. Marchand, CA 26,558 (Kennedy) Jun 27, 2007, aff’d in part and rev’d in part, SC 30,608 (Bosson) Oct 14, 2008
Although the Air Stabilization Act, enacted after the events of September 11, provides that the determination of the special master shall be final and not subject to appeal, that applies only to the gross award and not to the distribution of the award because the Act provides that it shall be distributed in accordance with the law of the decedent’s domicile and any court rulings therein; however, special master’s award of $100,000 each in non-economic damages to decedent’s spouse and dependent stepson were not reviewable under the Act because they are expressly provided for in the Act in those terms; with regard to non-economic loss to the estate, the $250,000 provided for in the Act was properly distributed 3/4 to the wife and 1/4 to the natural son in accordance with intestate succession law; with regard to the remainder of the award, which was economic loss, trial court erred in distributing it to wife as community property because it is to be distributed in accordance with wrongful death law; no evidence supported fraud, malfeasance, or other claims by natural son against wife.
Rev’d to the extent that the COA took collateral offsets off the entire award and then distributed the award from that point on, whereas the SC holds that the award should be divided up and then collateral offsets subtracted (which, as a practical matter, means that wife gets nothing in economic losses because she had so many collateral offsets) and aff’d as to other issues.