The Foundation of Human Understanding v. Masters

It is within the trial court’s discretion to decline requests to supplement the summary judgment record after the court has rendered its decision. Williams v. Haverfield, 82 Or App 553, 559, 728 P2d 924 (1986).

The defendant appealed the declaratory judgment which identified the members of the Foundation for Human Understanding (FHU) board and declared that the defendants were not board members. Defendant assigned error to the trial courts grant to the motion of summary judgement, arguing that there are triable issues of fact that preclude summary judgement. The defendant argued, which was a deviation from his initial opposition to summary judgment, that Roy Masters, founder of FHU, was legally incapacitated at some point prior to summary judgment being granted and was therefore violating the FHU bylaws. It is within the trial court’s discretion to decline requests to supplement the summary judgment record after the court has rendered its decision. Williams v. Haverfield, 82 Or App 553, 559, 728 P2d 924 (1986). The Court ruled that there was no reason the defendant could not have provided his incapacitation reasoning in his original summary judgement claim or before the court issued its letter opinion in March 2019 when the defendant had this information in 2018. Due to the defendant’s multiple opportunities to submit the October 2019 incapacity judgement, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it did not consider evidence submitted for the first time in a motion to reconsider. The trial court did not err in granting summary judgement. Affirmed.