1. Introduction
In Engellant v. Crowley Fleck, the Montana Supreme Court denied petitions for rehearing following its September 15, 2026 opinion affirming a defense judgment in a legal-malpractice action. The underlying dispute involved the relationship between probate proceedings concerning Gregory Engellant’s estate and a negligence action against Crowley Fleck, PLLP, and attorney Daniel N. McLean.
Daren Engellant, acting for Gregory’s estate, challenged the treatment of probate rulings, jury instructions, and the alleged injury caused by Gregory’s lifetime transfer of stock. Kevin Engellant separately challenged the rejection of his attempt to intervene in the malpractice litigation. Both sought reconsideration under Montana Rule of Appellate Procedure 20.
The order’s significance is principally procedural: rehearing requires an overlooked material fact, an overlooked potentially decisive question, or an unaddressed conflict with a statute or controlling decision. It is not simply another opportunity to contest the appellate result.
Important limitation: The supplied text is the rehearing order, not the September 15 merits opinion. It recounts the parties’ positions in detail but gives only a brief explanation for denying rehearing. Accordingly, the order should not be treated as independently establishing every substantive proposition advanced by the defendants.
2. Background and Procedural Setting
Daren appeared individually and as personal representative of Gregory’s estate. The defendants were Crowley Fleck and McLean. The caption also identifies Kenneth Engellant and Shana Diekhans as third-party defendants, with Kenneth participating as a cross-appellant. Kevin’s rehearing petition concerned intervention in the malpractice case.
The underlying controversy involved Gregory’s 1978 will, a disputed 2012 will, and his September 2012 transfer of ERC stock. The estate maintained that the defendants’ negligence caused a compensable loss. The defendants relied on the asserted validity of the 2012 will as a defense to causation and damages.
According to the defendants’ response, the 2012 will and its asserted effect on causation had been part of the malpractice litigation since their August 2020 answer. Kevin sought intervention after the action had been pending for more than four years and an eight-day trial had concluded.
The jury returned a verdict favoring Crowley Fleck and McLean, and the First Judicial District Court entered judgment. The Supreme Court affirmed that judgment on September 15, 2026. Daren and Kevin then petitioned for rehearing. Crowley Fleck opposed both petitions, and Diekhans joined its arguments.
4. Analysis
A. Precedents and Legal Authorities Cited
No separately named judicial precedent is cited in the supplied order. Its authorities are M. R. App. P. 20, § 72-3-317, MCA, and references to the Court’s earlier opinion and accompanying concurrence in this litigation. A faithful commentary therefore cannot attribute the decision to additional cases not identified in the text.
M. R. App. P. 20
Rule 20 supplies the controlling framework. Its focus is not whether a party continues to disagree with the result, but whether the appellate decision contains a qualifying omission or an unaddressed conflict with governing law. The Court expressly relied on this rule in concluding that rehearing was unwarranted.
Section 72-3-317, MCA
Daren invoked this statute as a finality provision. He argued that a formal testacy order is “final as to all persons” regarding questions relevant to whether the decedent left a valid will. His position was that the Court had treated his argument too narrowly—as essentially collateral estoppel—without addressing the statute’s independent effect.
This distinction matters. Statutory finality and common-law issue preclusion may overlap, but their sources and requirements are not necessarily identical. Nevertheless, the rehearing order neither quotes the complete statute nor supplies an extended interpretation of it. The denial therefore should not be described as a comprehensive construction of § 72-3-317, MCA.
The September 15 Opinion and Its Concurrence
The earlier opinion supplied the immediate decisional background. Crowley Fleck argued that it had already resolved the probate-related objections, the instructional challenge, and the consequences of a valid 2012 will for the estate’s claimed stock loss.
Crowley Fleck also relied on the concurrence’s discussion of preservation: Daren had not preserved a distinct damages claim based on Gregory’s loss of ownership, control, or use of the stock during his lifetime. The concurrence’s reasoning is relevant to the rehearing dispute, but it should not automatically be equated with a separate majority holding.
B. Kevin’s Intervention Argument: Knowledge of Litigation Versus Knowledge of an Interest
Kevin argued that the Court had focused on the wrong question. In his view, timeliness depended not on when he knew the malpractice action existed, but on when he knew or should have known that his own interest required intervention. He contended that the need arose only when the trial transformed the validity of the 2012 will into an issue for the malpractice jury.
Crowley Fleck responded on several grounds:
- Earlier notice: The validity of the 2012 will and its asserted effect on causation had been raised in the August 2020 answer.
- Legally protected interest: It argued that only the personal representative had standing to bring the professional-negligence claim and that Kevin lacked a cognizable interest in that litigation.
- No probate prejudice: It relied on the earlier opinion’s determination that the malpractice verdict did not affect the probate court’s orders.
- Adequate representation: It pointed to the District Court’s finding that Daren adequately represented any relevant interests Kevin possessed.
- Prejudice from delay: Intervention accompanied by a new-trial request after an eight-day trial would, it maintained, seriously prejudice the defendants.
These arguments implicate distinct questions: when intervention became necessary, whether Kevin had an interest sufficient to support intervention, whether that interest was already represented, and what disruption intervention would cause.
The Supreme Court did not separately resolve each point in the rehearing order. Its express determination was that Kevin had not established grounds for rehearing. In particular, the defendants’ standing argument should not be converted into a categorical new holding about every beneficiary’s ability to intervene in estate-related litigation.
C. Probate Finality and the Malpractice Defense
Daren’s principal objection concerned the relationship between the probate proceeding and the malpractice action. He maintained that admission of the 1978 will to probate conclusively established its status as Gregory’s valid final will, preventing the defendants from relying on the 2012 will to defeat the estate’s negligence claim.
Crowley Fleck characterized this as an argument repeatedly presented and already rejected. Its response emphasized a distinction between determining rights in probate and deciding causation and damages in a separate negligence action.
That distinction is legally important. A probate proceeding determines matters concerning testamentary status and estate administration. A malpractice action asks whether professional negligence caused a legally compensable loss. Overlapping evidence does not necessarily make the legal questions identical.
Equally, the distinction does not establish that probate orders can never bind parties or constrain later litigation. The rehearing order does not announce such a broad rule. It leaves the earlier disposition intact without independently explaining the full relationship between statutory probate finality and malpractice defenses.
D. Jury Instructions and the Alleged Overlooked Prejudice
Daren challenged the earlier conclusion that the estate suffered no prejudice when the trial court removed an agreed fact concerning probate of the 1978 will from the jury instructions. He argued that the Court had overlooked the combined effect of that omission and Instruction 33, which directed jurors to:
“disregard all evidence and comments of counsel regarding any ruling that the probate court has or has not made.”
His argument concerned how the instructions operated together: removing the agreed fact while directing jurors to disregard probate rulings allegedly deprived the estate of the benefit of those rulings.
Crowley Fleck answered that the Court had already rejected the challenge. It also relied on the earlier opinion’s statement that Instruction 33’s directive concerning the absence of a final probate judgment was accurate and consistent with the record.
The rehearing question was thus whether Daren identified a material instructional effect the Court had genuinely overlooked, rather than merely a different presentation of an already considered objection. The Court found no basis for rehearing, but the order does not supply a fresh, detailed harmless-error analysis.
E. Lifetime Injury and Preservation of Damages
Daren also distinguished Gregory’s lifetime loss from the estate’s eventual testamentary position. He argued that even if the 2012 will was valid, negligent advice could still have caused Gregory an injury by inducing him to surrender property during life.
Conceptually, that distinction is significant. Losing present ownership, control, or use of property is not necessarily the same injury as losing its value through an estate distribution. A conclusion concerning the latter does not automatically answer every possible claim concerning the former.
Crowley Fleck’s response, however, focused on preservation. It stated that the District Court had granted judgment as a matter of law against all damages claims other than the value of the stock, and that Daren had not challenged that ruling on appeal or in his rehearing petition. It invoked the concurrence’s explanation that a separate lifetime-use or control claim had not been preserved.
This exposes an important procedural limit: a potentially meaningful theory of injury does not necessarily remain available on appeal if the ruling excluding it was left unchallenged. The rehearing denial should therefore not be read as declaring lifetime deprivation inherently noncompensable. The dispute, as presented in the order, concerned whether that distinct theory remained properly before the Court.
F. The Order’s Reasoning and Its Limits
The order’s express reasoning is concise: after considering the submissions, the Court found no qualifying ground under Rule 20. The parties’ exchanges nevertheless reveal the controlling procedural divide:
- The petitioners characterized their objections as overlooked questions or material facts.
- The defendants characterized them as previously resolved arguments, reframed for rehearing.
- The defendants also identified preservation barriers to the asserted lifetime-injury theory.
Denial establishes that the petitions did not justify rehearing. It does not necessarily establish that the Court adopted every opposing argument or resolved every disputed characterization in the defendants’ favor.
7. Conclusion
Engellant v. Crowley Fleck reinforces the limited role of rehearing under M. R. App. P. 20. The Supreme Court declined to reopen its affirmance despite arguments concerning intervention, statutory probate finality, jury instructions, and a distinct lifetime injury.
The central lesson is procedural discipline: identify genuinely overlooked matters, preserve distinct claims and damages theories, and distinguish disagreement with a decision from a qualifying basis for reconsideration. The order leaves the earlier judgment intact without announcing a broad new rule governing the substantive relationship between probate proceedings and legal malpractice.