## Facts

- Cathy Frost and John Spencer, longtime friends with intermittent romantic involvement, jointly operated “Footloose Alaska,” providing guided hunting expeditions and later catering/events.
- They operated without a written partnership agreement and acquired real and personal property used in the enterprise, including a lodge titled only in Spencer’s name due to Frost’s financial difficulties but treated by both as jointly purchased and used.
- Frost primarily handled marketing, food service, and public relations; Spencer primarily handled expeditions, property maintenance, and equipment-related work.
- After the relationship deteriorated, Spencer sued to dissolve what he characterized as a partnership and to divide business-related property.
- Throughout pretrial and trial, both parties expressly tried the case on the understanding that domestic-partnership (unmarried cohabitant) property principles would govern, and they presented evidence oriented to that framework.
- After the evidentiary record closed, the superior court concluded the dispute should instead be decided under business-partnership law, permitted post-trial briefing on the legal framework, denied Frost’s request to reopen evidence, and entered judgment dividing property under partnership principles.

## Issues

1. Whether the superior court erred by resolving the property division under business-partnership law rather than domestic-partnership property principles where the parties tried the case under the domestic-partnership framework.
2. Whether the superior court abused its discretion by refusing to reopen the evidentiary record after switching the governing legal theory post-trial.

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court vacated the superior court’s judgment and remanded.
- The court held the superior court abused its discretion by denying Frost a supplemental evidentiary hearing after changing the governing legal framework from domestic-partnership principles to business-partnership principles.
- The court reasoned that the shift made different facts legally significant, and fairness required a meaningful opportunity to present evidence responsive to the framework actually applied.

## Legal Principles

- Litigants must have notice of the controlling legal standards and a fair opportunity to present evidence material to those standards.
- When a court changes to a substantially different substantive theory after the evidentiary record closes—especially one that makes different facts significant—it generally must allow an additional evidentiary opportunity to avoid unfair surprise.
- Trial-management discretion is limited by procedural fairness; denying a requested reopening of proof can be an abuse of discretion when the denial materially prejudices a party after a late legal-theory shift.

## Conclusion

Because the case was tried under one property-division framework but decided under another without reopening the evidence, the Alaska Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded to ensure the parties could present evidence suited to the governing legal theory.


Frost v. Spencer, 218 P.3d 678 (Alaska 2009)