Before Justices Hardesty, Parraguirre, and Cherry. Opinion by Justice Parraguirre.
In this appeal from an attorney malpractice action stemming from trust litigation, the appellant raises two unrelated issues stemming from an action to void certain documents that transferred assets among two revocable trusts benefitting the appellant’s and his wife’s children from other marriages. Appellant’s attorney, acting at the instruction of appellant’s agent, who had been appointed as both appellant’s attorney-in-fact and as trustee to appellant’s wife’s trust, prepared certain transfer documents for appellant’s signature. Although the attorney never personally met with appellant, appellant signed the documents, which resulted in the transfer of $1 million of appellant’s assets to his wife’s trust. After his wife’s death, Appellant sought to void the documents and filed a legal malpractice action against his attorney. The first issue concerns whether the district court properly denied a motion in limine to preclude the attorney from arguing that an attorney-client relationship did not exist when the district court had previously determined, in the trust litigation concerning the documents, that such a relationship existed and created a conflict of interest. In resolving this issue, the court applied the four-part issue preclusion test from Five Star Capital Corp. v. Ruby, 124 Nev. 1048, 1052, 194 P.3d 709, 711 (2008), and determined that only the fourth element (whether “the issue was actually and necessarily litigated”) was in dispute. The court concluded that, while the existence of an attorney-client relationship was actually litigated, it was not necessarily litigated. In Nevada, issue preclusion will only apply if a matter was necessary to the prior judgment. Analogizing to a factually similar Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision, the court held that resolving the underlying trust litigation did not depend on whether an attorney-client relationship existed and, therefore, that issue was not necessarily litigated in the trust action and issue preclusion did not apply. The second issue the Court addressed concerned whether the district court properly excluded parol evidence to demonstrate the appellant’s intent in executing the documents that ultimately resulted in the $1 million transfer. Appellant conceded that the documents were unambiguous, but he argued that the documents did not meet his objectives. The Court held that parol evidence is not admissible to demonstrate intent where the language of a document is clear on its face and, therefore, the district court properly excluded the evidence. The Court further reiterated that its statement in Russ v. General Motors Corp., 111 Nev. 1431, 1438-39, 906 P.2d 718, 723 (1995), that a court should consider evidence of intent to determine whether a document is susceptible to interpretation is not the law as it has been discredited in another published opinion as dicta. In a footnote, the Court also stated that it was not clear whether the parol evidence rule should apply at all when a party seeks recovery for legal malpractice and is not seeking to contradict the terms of a document. The Court could not address that that question as it was not properly presented in this appeal. Affirmed. (Seth T. Floyd, Associate in the Las Vegas office of McDonald Carano Wilson).
