Newest justice on state Supreme Court had role in major decisions

PHOENIX — Newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Maria Elena Cruz has played a key role in some major decisions while she was a judge on the Court of Appeals.

In May, she wrote for a unanimous panel of the court when it rebuffed efforts by lenders, debt collectors and attorneys to void a voter-approved law designed to protect Arizonans from creditors.

Cruz said she and her colleagues found no merit to claims that a provision of Proposition 209 was “was vague and unintelligible,” something challengers said made the entire measure unenforceable. And that allegation alone, their attorney argued, should free the creditors from having to obey the entire law that voters approved in 2022 by a margin of nearly 3-1.

Cruz acknowledged that laws can be be declared void for vagueness when it does not provide someone with “ordinary intelligence’’ a reasonable opportunity to avoid violating the statute as well as guidance on what standards would be used to determine that.

“However, a statute is not vague merely because it is susceptible to more than one interpretation,’’ she wrote. “Nor is a statute unconstitutionally vague because one of its terms is not explicitly defined.’’

What makes the ruling significant is that it capped annual interest medical debt at no more than 3%. That compared with prior law at 10%.

But it also allows anyone who declares bankruptcy to protect to $400,000 in the value of a home, up from $240,000.

Similarly, up to $15,000 of possessions are now shielded from seizure by creditors. That figure is now $6,000. And up to $25,000 in equity in a motor vehicle also is protected, compared with $12,000 under the old law.

And then there’s a provision limiting the amount of someone’s disposable income that can be seized under garnishment actions.

Cruz also authored a 2023 ruling striking down a bid by Republican lawmakers to immunize doctors and hospitals from claims they acted negligently in treating patients during the COVID outbreak.

In that unanimous decision, Cruz wrote that the 2021 law runs afoul of a provision of the Arizona Constitution which clearly spells out that lawmakers cannot revoke the right of anyone to recover damages for injuries. That same language bars any statute that caps the amount of damages someone who sues successfully can recover.

The new ruling most immediately affected anyone who claims they were injured by a medical provider who was furnishing care for virus suffers between March 11, 2020 when then-Gov. Doug Ducey declared a state of emergency and March 30, 2022 when he terminated it. Pushed by a lobbyist for the company that insures most Arizona doctors, it was designed to provide them protection from lawsuits.

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Cruz said there was nothing wrong with a part of the measure that required anyone filing suit to provide “clear and convincing evidence.’’ That is a higher standard than what normally exists in civil cases which says jurors decide based on a “preponderance of the evidence,’’ meaning whether it is more or less likely that someone was negligent.

But this measure, Cruz said, goes farther by totally eliminating the right of anyone who is the victim of ordinary negligence without any legal options at all.

“The Legislature may regulate the cause of action for negligence so long as it leaves claimants reasonable alternatives or choices for bringing their claims,’’ she wrote. But Cruz said SB 1377 “leaves no such alternative available to those injured by the negligence of medical professionals in providing COVID-related treatment.’’

“(The Arizona Constitution) does not permit the Legislature to wholly extinguish a particular type of claim available at common law even if alternative causes of action remain to injured claimants,’’ Cruz wrote.

Cruz has not always been on the prevailing side in appellate court rulings.

In 2019 two other judges on the panel ruled that a divorced woman is entitled to implant some fertilized embryos despite the objections of her former husband.

The majority acknowledged the contract the couple signed with the clinic doing in-vitro fertilization said that in the event of a separation or divorce, the embryos could be used solely with the “express written consent of both parties.’’ But Appellate Judge Jennifer Campbell, writing that decision, said that on balancing the interests of both parties the wife is entitled to do with the eggs what she wants.

In her dissent, Cruz chided her colleagues for ignoring the plain language of the contract the pair had signed. And she said the two other judges were ignoring a constitutional provision that says the state cannot interfere with contracts.

She agreed that the contract the couple signed did leave the fate of the embryos up to a trial judge. But Cruz said that failed to recognize the mutual-consent requirement to use them.

“Nothing in the agreement states that a court is free to disregard the other terms of the agreement when it decides the question,’’ she wrote.

As it turned out, Cruz was legally correct — at least as far as the Supreme Court was concerned.

In 2020 the justices overturned the majority ruling, saying the divorced man’s desire not to be a parent trumped the wishes of his ex-wife to use the frozen embryos.

“Because (the agreement) unambiguously requires one party’s express, contemporaneous permission before the other can use the embryos to achieve a pregnancy after divorce, the family court could not award the embryos to one party against the other’s wishes,’’ wrote Justice Ann Scott Timmer.