STEPHENS v. STATE

── STEPHENS v. STATE ── Court: Arizona Supreme Court Date: May 22, 2026 Category: General IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ARIZONA STEPHANIE STEPHENS, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. STATE OF ARIZONA, ET AL., Defendants/Appellees. No. CV-25-0070-PR Filed May 22, 2026 Appeal from the Superior Court in Maricopa County The Honorable Rodrick J. Coffey, Judge No. CV2022-092486 AFFIRMED Memorandum Decision of the Court of Appeals, Division One 1 CA-CV 24-0309 Filed February 27, 2025 VACATED COUNSEL: Kristin K. Mayes, Arizona Attorney General, Rebecca A. Banes (argued), Julie M. Rhodes, Deborah Garner, Assistant Attorneys General, Phoenix, Attorneys for State of Arizona, et al.  STEPHENS v. STATE Opinion of the Court Keith M. Knowlton (argued), Keith M. Knowlton, LLC, Chandler, Attorney for Stephanie Stephens CHIEF JUSTICE TIMMER authored the Opinion of the Court, in which VICE CHIEF JUSTICE LOPEZ, JUSTICES BEENE, KING, and CRUZ joined. JUSTICE MONTGOMERY concurred in part, dissented in part and dissented from the disposition. JUSTICE BOLICK dissented and joined JUSTICE MONTGOMERY in part. CHIEF JUSTICE TIMMER, Opinion of the Court: ¶1 This case arises from a series of family court and juvenile court proceedings involving Stephanie Stephens, Demetrius Kovacs, and their two minor children. In the juvenile court proceedings, the Department of Child Safety (“DCS”) successfully removed the children from both parents’ care and initiated a dependency action that resulted in the children being found dependent as to both parents. Although the dependency was ultimately dismissed after new information came to light, Stephens later filed a wrongful institution of civil proceedings (“WICP”) claim against DCS employees, alleging that the application for removal and the dependency proceedings lacked probable cause. Before us is whether Stephens sufficiently alleged the absence of probable cause needed to sustain that claim. We conclude she did not, and the superior court, therefore, correctly dismissed the complaint. BACKGROUND ¶2 Stephens appealed the superior court’s dismissal of her first amended complaint (“complaint”) pursuant to Arizona Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failing to allege a legally viable claim. Therefore, the facts here are taken entirely from Stephens’s complaint, redacted court records from the dependency proceedings that were presented to the superior court in this case, and the court of appeals’ memorandum decision in the dependency case, Stephanie S. v. Dep’t of Child Safety, No. 1 CA-JV 20-0227, 2021 WL 1578158 (Ariz. App. Apr. 22, 2021) (mem. decision). See Coleman v. City of Mesa, 230 Ariz. 352, 356 ¶ 9 (2012) (stating that “public records regarding matters referenced in a complaint[] are not ‘outside the 2  STEPHENS v. STATE Opinion of the Court pleading,’” and courts can consider them as part of the Rule 12(b)(6) motion). ¶3 In July 2019, Stephens and Kovacs were engaged in a contentious marital dissolution proceeding, where they battled for custody of their two preteen children. Kovacs alleged that the children feared Stephens’s live-in boyfriend (“Boyfriend”) and had been abused by him. After interviewing the children, the family court judge, Scott Blaney, found their statements not credible and maintained the existing parenting time arrangement. Two months later, one child alleged that Boyfriend had touched her inappropriately, and Judge Blaney gave Kovacs temporar