WILLIS v. STATE (2026)

ORDER OF AFFIRMANCE

Appellant Clarence Willis and a co-defendant, Ernest Aldridge, were indicted in 2019 by a Nevada grand jury on numerous counts of burglary, theft, and fraud after they impersonated the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) by creating a corporation with the same name and filing fraudulent quitclaim deeds with the Clark County Recorder's Office in an attempt to gain control of multiple properties. Pursuant to negotiations and an amended indictment, Willis and Aldridge eventually pled nolo contendere to two counts of misdemeanor theft with a one-year stay of adjudication. The plea agreement required them to comply with a series of conditions restricting their conduct in relation to the contested properties, including “not undertaking any act to exercise control over or possession of the properties” and maintaining “compliance with all court orders (including civil court orders currently in place or subsequently entered related to any of the properties).”

During the one-year stay period, Willis and Aldridge filed a complaint in Nevada federal district court contesting a 2018 judgment entered against them in the same court which quieted title on the contested properties in Fannie Mae's favor. In their newly filed complaint, they asked for the 2018 judgment to “be dismissed for want of jurisdiction and ․ vacated,” and for Willis and Aldridge to each be paid substantial damages “for the tortious injuries of fraud, defamation, extortion and abuse of legal process” that the judgment purportedly caused them. The federal district court dismissed the complaint with prejudice, held Willis and Aldridge in contempt for violating prior orders instructing them to cease filing lawsuits over the contested properties, and declared them vexatious litigants.

At the end of the one-year stay period, the State contended that Willis and Aldridge violated the conditions of the plea agreement prohibiting them from undertaking any act to exercise control over the contested properties by filing the federal complaint asking that court to vacate its earlier quiet title judgment. The state district court agreed and adjudicated Willis and Aldridge guilty of two counts of misdemeanor theft pursuant to the plea agreement.

On appeal, Willis makes arguments nearly identical to those recently rejected on a similar appeal from Willis's co-defendant. See Aldridge v. State, No. 88853, 2025 WL 2992333 (Nev., Oct. 23, 2025) (Order of Affirmance).

Given the similarity between the two appeals, the Aldridge order is highly persuasive here. Both sides contend that abuse of discretion review applies to the district court's interpretation of the plea agreement, citing Lewis v. State, 90 Nev. 436, 529 P.2d 796 (1974) (evaluating whether sufficient evidence established that the defendant violated his probation conditions). But this appeal presents a matter of textual interpretation, not evidence sufficiency, as the question is whether undisputed conduct—filing the federal complaint—fits within the meaning of the plea agreement's conditions. Plea agreement interpretation is governed by the same principles as contract interpretation. See Aldape v. State, 139 Nev. 388, 390, 535 P.3d 1184, 1188 (2023) (“Contract principles apply to plea agreements.”). Under contract law, “[w]hen the facts in a case are not in dispute, contract interpretation is a question of law, which this court reviews de novo.” Lehrer McGovern Bovis, Inc. v. Bullock Insulation, Inc., 124 Nev. 1102, 1115, 197 P.3d 1032, 1041 (2008). We therefore apply de novo review to the district court's finding that Willis's conduct fell under the plea agreement's prohibitions. See Aldridge, 2025 WL 2992333, at *1-2 (reaching the same conclusion).

Willis maintains that he never violated the plea agreement because none of its terms prohibited him from filing a complaint or seeking damages. We rejected this argument in Aldridge, finding that the condition prohibiting “any act [taken] to exercise control over” the contested properties necessarily encompassed attempts to call back into question their rightful ownership and was therefore violated by Willis's effort to disquiet the already quieted titles. Id. at *2 (“Had the federal court vacated the 2018 quiet title judgment as Aldridge asked it to do in his 2023 complaint, his bogus deeds would once again cloud title to the properties.”). Willis provides no reason to rule differently here. Further, in his federal complaint, he alleged that he was the victim of fraud and “deceived by the pretended cloud on titles.” Litigating such claims would require the federal court to evaluate who had rightful ownership of the contested properties and would require Willis to defend his past efforts to exercise control as legitimate, or at least reasonably mistaken. We agree with the district court that initiating such a process amounted to an attempt to exercise control over the properties in violation of the plea agreement terms.

This resolution makes it unnecessary to address the State's alternative argument, made for the first time on appeal, that by filing the federal complaint Willis also violated the condition requiring compliance with civil orders related to the contested properties. Nor are we persuaded by Willis's argument that the phrase “stay out of trouble” proscribes only criminal conduct. Had the plea agreement only provided that the defendant “stay out of trouble,” perhaps that distinction would matter. Compare State v. Arde, 941 N.E.2d 119, 122 (Ohio Ct. App. 2010) (noting that “[t]he general meaning of ‘don't get in trouble’ is generally interpreted in [plea agreement] situations as not getting arrested”), with Matter of Discipline of Randazza, No. 76453, 2018 WL 5095812, at *2 (Nev., Oct. 10, 2018) (Order Approving Conditional Guilty Plea Agreement) (defining “stay out of trouble” to include any conduct warranting professional discipline). But in this case, it is a distinction without a difference: regardless of whether the no-exercise-of-control condition is labeled as a stay-out-of-trouble condition or something else, its language, taken in context, encompasses the filing of the federal court complaint. The label does not change the analysis described above.

Accordingly, we

ORDER the judgment of the district court AFFIRMED.