Valid Civil Settlement Between Victim & Criminal Defendant Limits Any Award of Restitution.

State v. Ramsay, Minn.Ct.App., 10/19/2010.  Ms. Ramsay’s employer, Minnesota Eyecare, sued her, claiming that she had helped herself to as much as $150,000.00 of its money through various nefarious schemes.  The state got into the action by bringing a theft prosecution against her.  Minnesota Eyecare and Ms. Ramsey mediated a settlement of the civil case under which she agreed to pay back $125,121.00 as damages, and an additional twenty grand over five years “as a condition of her probation.”  Minnesota Eyecare agreed to recommend to the prosecutor that restitution be ordered in the amount of $20,000.00.  Lastly, there was the standard release by each party of claims by the other.  Thereafter, Ms. Ramsay negotiated a plea with the state under which she agreed that it was up to the state to establish the amount of restitution.

This last part of the plea negotiation was because the parties had a falling out over the civil agreement.  Eventually, Minnesota Eyecare was demanding nearly ninety grand in restitution and Ms. Ramsay was resisting paying the originally agreed upon additional twenty grand.  The trial court eventually set restitution in the neighborhood of forty-five thousand, denominated as “tangential expenses,” read, Minnesota Eyecare’s attorney’s fees mostly.

Now, the court of appeals just dealt with this kind of problem in State v. Arends, 786 N.W.2d 885 (Minn. App. 2010), pet. for review denied (Minn. Oct. 27, 2010).  Arends says that the civil settlement limited Minnesota Eyecare to restitution of twenty thousand; the state could not try to work around that valid agreement because its restitution efforts were on behalf of Minnesota Eyecare; that state thus had no authority to ask for one more penny.  If that were not enough, Ms. Ramsey’s plea was to theft of more than $1,000.00 but less than $5,000.00, and she did not make admissions beyond that (and everyone knew that by the time of sentencing she had paid what she had agreed to pay in the civil settlement, 125 large).  As a consequence, the trial court had no factual basis on which to have ordered restitution.