Hardy v. Hardy, 467 P.3d 931

Brian and Karen Hardy were divorced and disputed their child’s therapist choice; Brian believed Karen violated the decree by taking the child to an unapproved therapist.
To verify, Brian went to the therapist’s office when he believed Karen had an appointment, saw Karen in her car, and took two photographs of her.
Karen filed for a civil stalking injunction the same day; the district court rejected an unrelated alleged incident but found the therapist-office events constituted stalking.
The district court concluded that observing and photographing were separate acts (photographing served a different purpose) and together formed a “course of conduct” under Utah’s stalking statute, so it granted the injunction.
The Court of Appeals reversed: it held that observing and photographing, when done simultaneously and for the same purpose, constitute a single act and therefore do not satisfy the statute’s “two or more acts” requirement for a course of conduct; the stalking injunction was vacated.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether observing and photographing the same person in the same encounter can constitute a “course of conduct” under Utah’s stalking statute	Observing and photographing are separately listed in the statute and serve different purposes; together they are two acts fulfilling the “two or more acts” requirement	The photographing was simultaneous with and dependent on observing (observation is inherent in photographing), so the conduct was a single act and not a course of conduct	Reversed: simultaneous observing and photographing for the same purpose are a single act, not a course of conduct; injunction vacated

Judd v. Irvine, 360 P.3d 793 (Utah Ct. App. 2015) (standard: whether course-of-conduct finding is a question of law)
Ellison v. Stam, 136 P.3d 1242 (Utah Ct. App. 2006) (stalking is inherently an offense of repetition)