The Statement of Undisputed Material Facts: Why It Makes or Breaks Your Utah MSJ

Motions for Summary Judgment Reading Time: 7 minutes
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Ask any experienced Utah litigator what separates winning summary judgment motions from losing ones, and the answer will often surprise newcomers: it is not the legal argument. It is the Statement of Undisputed Material Facts.

The SUMF is the document that establishes the factual foundation of the motion. Courts take it extremely seriously. A poorly prepared SUMF — vague, inconsistently cited, or stocked with legal conclusions rather than facts — can sink an otherwise meritorious motion. A well-crafted SUMF creates an almost irrefutable foundation that the opposition must affirmatively undermine, fact by fact, with record evidence. Here is everything you need to know about building and responding to one.

What Is a Statement of Undisputed Material Facts?

A Statement of Undisputed Material Facts (SUMF) is a numbered list of factual propositions that the moving party contends are both undisputed and material to the outcome of the motion. Under URCP Rule 56(a)(1), each fact must be separately stated in numbered paragraphs and supported by citing to materials in the record.

The SUMF is filed alongside the motion for summary judgment and the supporting memorandum. It translates raw record evidence — depositions, documents, interrogatory responses, affidavits — into organized, cited propositions the court can efficiently evaluate against the governing legal standard.

Why the SUMF Is the Most Important Document in MSJ Practice

Many Utah district court judges review the SUMF and the opposing response before reading the legal argument. By the time they reach the briefs, they have already organized the genuinely disputed facts versus the established ones in their minds. If the SUMF creates a clean, undisputed factual narrative that supports the movant’s legal theory, the legal argument often needs only to explain why the established facts compel judgment as a matter of law.

The dynamic works powerfully against non-movants who fail to dispute SUMF entries with record citations. Any fact not specifically disputed with admissible record evidence is typically deemed admitted by Utah courts. Admitted facts become the established factual foundation for the court’s legal analysis — and a SUMF full of deemed-admitted facts is often decisive.

THE SUMF STANDARD UNDER URCP RULE 56

Each fact in the SUMF must be:

  1. A specific, discrete factual proposition — not a legal conclusion
  2. Supported by a specific citation to admissible record evidence
  3. Material — connected to an element of the claim or defense
  4. Actually undisputed, or at minimum genuinely unsupported by the opposing party

The Five SUMF Mistakes That Kill Summary Judgment Motions

1. Legal Conclusions Dressed as Facts

The SUMF must contain facts, not legal conclusions. “Defendant did not breach the contract” is a legal conclusion — it is exactly what the court is being asked to decide. “Defendant delivered the goods to the warehouse loading dock on June 14, 2023 at 9:47 a.m., as shown by the signed delivery receipt attached as Exhibit 4” is a fact. Courts regularly disregard SUMF entries that are legal conclusions rather than discrete factual propositions. If the court disregards enough entries, the factual foundation collapses.

2. Unsupported Facts

Every entry in the SUMF must cite admissible record evidence. A fact stated without a citation is disregarded. If you cannot point to a deposition excerpt, document, affidavit, or other admissible evidence for a proposition, do not include it — or obtain the supporting evidence before filing. The citation must actually support the proposition as stated; mischaracterizing the record is worse than omitting the citation.

3. Overbroad or Compound Facts

A SUMF entry that bundles multiple factual propositions into one paragraph invites partial disputes that are difficult to manage. “Smith received the package, examined its contents, confirmed they matched the order, and signed the receipt” is four facts — and the opposing party may be able to dispute one of those four while conceding the others. Break complex situations into discrete, individually supportable propositions.

4. Inadmissible Supporting Evidence

The supporting evidence must be admissible. Hearsay documents without a recognized exception, deposition testimony from someone without personal knowledge, unauthenticated documents, and declarations that violate the personal knowledge requirement of URCP Rule 56 — all are vulnerable to being struck. If the evidence underlying a critical SUMF entry is inadmissible, the fact it is supposed to support collapses with it. Check admissibility before relying on every piece of supporting evidence.

5. Mischaracterizing the Record

Some practitioners cite evidence that does not actually say what the SUMF claims. Courts catch this — and opposing counsel catch it first. A SUMF that overstates what the record shows signals that the movant knows the record is thin, damages credibility across the entire motion, and can prompt the court to look more carefully at every other citation. Cite the record accurately, even if the accurate version is slightly weaker than what you wish the evidence showed.

The Opposing Party’s Response: How It Works

Under URCP Rule 56, the non-moving party must respond to every entry in the SUMF. For each entry, the response must admit it, dispute it with a specific record citation, or admit it in part and dispute it in part. The rules are clear: a fact not specifically disputed with record evidence is deemed admitted.

This creates an important dynamic for well-crafted motions: if the SUMF is accurate and well-supported, the non-moving party faces genuine difficulty disputing it without evidence. Where opposing counsel cannot find record evidence to dispute a key fact, they must admit it — and those admitted facts form the established foundation for the court’s legal analysis.

What does not count as a dispute:

  • General denials without record citations
  • References to the non-moving party’s complaint or answer
  • Affidavits without personal knowledge foundation
  • Assertions that evidence will be developed at trial

For more on the non-movant’s obligations when responding to a SUMF, and how to add your own additional facts, see our guide to how to oppose a motion for summary judgment in Utah.

Additional Facts: The Non-Moving Party’s SUMF

The non-moving party typically has the right to file its own statement of additional material facts — propositions the movant omitted from its SUMF but that are material to the outcome. This is an important strategic tool. If the movant’s SUMF tells only part of the story, the opposing party’s additional facts fill in the gaps with evidence that creates genuine disputes or establishes a favorable context the movant chose to leave out.

Additional facts must follow the same rules: specific, discrete propositions, supported by admissible record evidence, and connected to the outcome. The movant then responds to these additional facts in the reply. When executed well, this exchange of competing fact statements gives the court a complete, balanced picture of the record before it reaches the legal argument.

How the SUMF Becomes the Appellate Record

The SUMF and the opposing response do not disappear after the trial court rules. They become part of the appellate record the Utah Court of Appeals reviews de novo when the summary judgment ruling is appealed. Appellate courts reviewing the same SUMF exchange can identify exactly where the trial court failed to recognize a genuine dispute, where it deemed facts admitted that were actually contested, or where the movant’s citations did not support the propositions claimed.

A well-crafted opposition that disputes the right SUMF entries with specific record citations creates a clean appellate record showing precisely where genuine disputes exist. For how this plays out on appeal, see our analysis of appealing a summary judgment ruling in Utah.

KEY RULE

URCP Rule 56(a)(1) — The SUMF Requirement

A motion for summary judgment in Utah must contain a statement of material facts claimed not to be genuinely disputed, with each fact separately stated in numbered paragraphs and supported by citing to materials in the record. Facts must be discrete factual propositions — not legal conclusions — supported by admissible evidence. Any fact in the movant’s SUMF not specifically disputed by the non-moving party with a record citation is deemed admitted and may be treated as established for the court’s legal analysis.

If You Are Building or Responding to a SUMF

The SUMF is where summary judgment is often won or lost before the legal argument is ever read. Lotus Appellate Law works with Utah litigants and trial counsel on summary judgment motions at all stages — from SUMF drafting and opposition through the appellate briefing that follows an adverse ruling. Contact us to discuss your motion.

Lotus Appellate Law — Motions for Summary Judgment Evaluation
An adverse summary judgment ruling is not always the end of the road. Utah appellate courts review summary judgment de novo — with no deference to the trial court — making it one of the most reversible rulings in civil litigation. Lotus Appellate Law handles Utah civil appeals at the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court level. Reach out to schedule a consultation.

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