In 2014, Quintin Grillone, a police officer in Murray City, Utah, resigned while under investigation for allegedly providing false information to a prosecutor handling a traffic citation against his mother. Grillone, while in uniform, accompanied his mother to court and reportedly gave inaccurate details that led to the dismissal of her case. He faced a misdemeanor charge for obstruction of justice, which was later dismissed, and the internal investigation by his department was never referred to Utah’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Division (POST).
In 2019, Grillone applied to reactivate his peace officer certification with a new department and disclosed the 2014 incident. POST initiated disciplinary proceedings, ultimately suspending his certification for three years retroactively, counting the time he had already spent separated from law enforcement.
Grillone challenged the proceedings as time-barred, arguing that Utah’s four-year catch-all statute of limitations for civil actions applied because the POST statute defines adjudicative proceedings as “civil actions.” An administrative law judge and the POST Council rejected this argument, concluding that civil statutes of limitation do not govern administrative disciplinary actions. Grillone appealed to the Utah Court of Appeals, which affirmed, relying on precedent which held that civil statutes of limitation do not apply to administrative proceedings absent “specific legislative authority.” The Court found the POST statute’s reference to “civil actions” insufficiently specific to incorporate the judicial code’s limitation periods. Grillone appealed once more.
The Utah Supreme Court affirmed, though it rejected the Court of Appeals’ requirement for “specific legislative authority” as overly rigid.
The Court emphasized that the civil statutes of limitation in the Utah Code are inherently tied to court actions, not administrative proceedings. The Court noted that the judicial code’s definition of “action,” including “counterclaims and cross-complaints and all other civil actions in which affirmative relief is sought,” refers to court pleadings, not administrative adjudications.
The Court also relied on the prior construction canon, noting that the legislature had recodified the judicial code in 2008 without altering the language interpreted in the preceding case relied upon by the appellate court, signaling approval of that decision’s holding. Additionally, the Court pointed to the structure of the Utah Code, where other statutes include their own limitation periods, suggesting that civil statutes of limitation do not automatically apply to administrative actions.
Turning to the POST statute’s “civil actions” language, the Court rejected Grillone’s argument that it incorporated the judicial code’s limitation periods. Instead, the Court concluded that the phrase was used to distinguish POST proceedings from criminal actions, clarifying that they are civil in nature even when addressing alleged criminal conduct.
Grillone v. Peace Officer Stds. & Training Council, 2025 Utah LEXIS 35* (Utah 2025).