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| John C. Mayoue practices in family law matters, specializing in complex and difficult cases. |
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Friday, April 28, 2006
Caught on Tape
Some divorces are contentious - others are so nasty they defy description.
Take the case of Brenda White, a 30-year-old woman from Salt Lake City. Police say she not only chased her estranged husband through a parking lot in her SUV, she continued to go after him even after he sought shelter inside a building. KUTV in Salt Lake City has the end of the chase on tape, captured by a surveillance camera trained on the building's lobby.
According to news reports, Ms. White and her husband John White have been separated for the past six months. Earlier this week, Mr White had just left the office building where he works and was walking through the parking lot when he heard the sound of a vehicle accelerating toward him. Witnesses told police it was Mrs. White at the wheel of her SUV and she began chasing Mr. White, who was on foot, through the parking lot. Mr. White apparently maneuvered his way through the parked cars back to the building and got through the back door, apparently thinking he would be safe.
But Mrs. White is apparently a very determined woman. She gunned the vehicle and sped through the glass doors of the building then, still driving the SUV, chased her husband down a hall and into the main lobby. As the surveillance camera tape shows, one bystander was in the lobby, sees the vehicle barrelling down and dodges out of the way. Just at that moment Mr. White exits the hallway and enters the lobby just as the SUV appears. Mr. White is struck by the driver's side of the vehicle and goes flying through the air while the truck continues forward and smashes into the glass doors at the front of the building. Mr. White scrambles to his feet and, with a broken ankle, scrambles into a side hallway while the SUV backs up, apparently in an effort to finish off Mr. White.
Police arrived shortly afterward and Mrs. White is now in jail, charged with attempted murder.
Incidently, the same surveillance video that captured the bizarre attack shows that just minutes before a small girl was playing in the lobby, exactly where
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Wednesday, April 12, 2006
What About "Green Card" Marriages?
Immigration policies are a highly controversial issue just now, but USA Today recently pointed out that none of the proposed solutions to illegal immigration addresses one of the most common ways illegals enter our country: through "green card" marriages.
According to the newspaper, The Department of Homeland Security says more foreigners gain U.S. residency through marriage than by any other method. In fact, marriage-based immigration accounted for 37 percent of all legal immigration in 2004.
But fraud is a huge problem with such immigration. For all the talk of fences and walls, guest worker programs, etc., no one is proposing doing more to discover immigration fraud through sham marriages. And this is quite worrisome, considering that terrorists are just as likely to use this method to enter our society as farm workers and construction crews.
The paper quotes research by the Center for Immigration Studies, which looked at 36 suspected terrorists who had obtained green cards. The center found that fully half had done so by marrying an American – and half of those had done so through a sham marriage.
I don't know of a single proposal being considered that would close this loophole, but perhaps some of our politicans should be considering it.
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Child Without His Father's Name No Longer Stigmatized
The Kansas Court of Appeals has turned an old tradition on its ear, ruling in effect that a child without its father's name is not stigmatized.
The ruling comes from an interesting case centering on a 2-year-old boy at the center of a paternity rights case. According to the court records, the father of the boy discontinued his relationship with the child's mother when he learned she was pregnant, along with all meaningful support. Consequently, when the child was born the mother refused to list him on the birth certificate and instead raised the child with her parents under their common family name.
Two years later, however, the father reappeared and sought to assert his paternal rights. He also issued a request that the trial court change the child's name to his, which the court promptly did. The mother, however, appealed, noting that the maternal name was the only one the child had ever known, and that important records - including the child's Social Security number - was in the maternal name.
The Kansas Court of Appeals agreed with the mother and reversed the name-change decision, holding that the trial court had relied too much on the precept that a child should bear its father's name. Instead, the appeals court held, the lower court should have applied the more modern principle of considering what was in the best interest of the child.
The appeals court clarified the prior case law and adopted authorities cited by the Mother which noted that traditional basis for a child bearing its fathers name - presumably based on shielding a child from the stigma of illegitimacy - had become inappropriate in today's society.
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Friday, April 07, 2006
Judges Enforcing Divorce Confidentiality Agreements
One of the ugliest divorce battles in Connecticut history demonstrates both the difficulty of getting warring spouses to abide by confidentiality agreements, and how courts are increasingly willing to enforce them.
The case involves Dr. Nicholas Perricone, known as an "anti-aging guru." His wife, Madeline, was set to expose him as a cheat. Last December, Dr. Perricone got word that Madeleine was to appear on ABC's "20/20," and got a judge to issue a ex parte cease-and-desist order preventing the appearance. A hearing on the order was postponed; but the day before the new hearing date, the New York Post ran an article based on interviews with Mrs. Perricone. Dr. Perricone had been on the Today show to promote his company, but another station canceled an interview when the scandal hit.
When the hearing on the cease-and-desist did take place, Mrs. Perricone argued that a Nov. 3, 2003, confidentiality agreement had caused her to do something no American can do: contractually waive their fundamental First Amendment Rights. However, the court cited not only precedent, but also the divorce case of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to rule her claim had no merit. In short, Mrs. Perricone can't do any more press interviews.
Confidentiality orders in divorce cases are becoming more commonplace, with trade secrets, business practices and identity theft being paramount concerns. And while spouses like Mrs. Perricone may want to spill the beans on errant spouses, even on national television, they must still abide by those orders.
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Update on bill to seal divorce financial records
Last month, I wrote about the controversy surrounding a bill being considered by the California legislature that would restrict public access to court records so that the financial privacy of court couples would be protected. Well, on Thursday, the bill, Senate Bill 1015, was approved by the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
This bill was sponsored by a man who has a constituent involved in a very public divorce case. The constituent is also, by the way, a billionaire and a major contributor to the sponsor's political party. But while I don't approve of the seaminess in which this legislation got its start, I am forced to agree with what it is aimed at doing.
Essentially, the bill prevents the public - and that means the press - from having access to financial records in a divorce action. It is the usual rule, of course, to make all evidence in a trial available to the public because of the public's interest in having all trials free and open. But in this world of identity theft it makes sense to withhold some information; and in the case of a businessman whose business interests (which presumably affect not only himself, but his employees and shareholders) some financial information - like planned mergers - may be highly sensitive and not necessarily relevant to the determination of marital assets.
In my original post on this topic, I said that the smelly politics behind this bill made it seem that billionaires could order up special legislation to suit their very personal needs. I suggested that the solution would be to not to have an all-encompassing proscription against financial details, but to have each court have discretion on what documents should be released.
So I was very happy when I read this in the newspaper:
The committee amended the bill to require judges to decide case-by-case whether financial privacy trumps the public's right to access. The original wording would have required the sealing of records if one party asked for it.
The news media doesn't like this bill, presumably because it will keep them from seeing records in many celebrity cases, or those involving businessmen. I understand their frustration - but for every instance in which the public may have a legitimate interest in such data, I can think of about a thousand instances in which the public's interest is more one of curiousity and nosiness.
I still don't like the politics that gave birth to the bill, but I suppose even good legislation arises from the cesspool of politics. If this bill is finally approved and signed into law, I think there will still be few cases in which financial records are sealed, since every judge I know is sensitive to the public's interest in open judicial proceedings.
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