Case Title: Remick v. Martin

Citation: 

Docket Number: 2014 ME 120

State: maine

Court: Maine Supreme Court

Date: 2014-11-04T00:00:00Z

Document:
MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2014 ME 120 
Docket: 
Yor-14-37 
Submitted 
On Briefs: September 23, 2014 
Decided: 
November 4, 2014 
 
Panel: 
SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, SILVER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, and HJELM, 
JJ. 
 
 
CYNTHIA (MARTIN) REMICK 
 
v. 
 
KEVIN MARTIN 
 
 
GORMAN, J. 
[¶1]  Kevin Martin appeals from a judgment of the District Court 
(Biddeford, Foster, J.) denying his various post-judgment motions in connection 
with his 2010 divorce from Cynthia (Martin) Remick.  Martin challenges several of 
the court’s factual findings on which the court based its denial.  We vacate and 
remand for reconsideration.   
I.  BACKGROUND 
[¶2]  Martin and Remick divorced on July 27, 2010.  They have one minor 
child, born in 2003.  In the divorce judgment, the court (Janelle, J.) awarded sole 
parental rights and responsibilities along with primary residential care to Remick 
and granted Martin extensive contact on weekdays, weekends, and holidays.  The 
 
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court also ordered Martin to receive counseling focused on domestic violence and 
provide Remick with information about the counseling.  
[¶3]  In the spring and summer of 2011, the parties filed various motions for 
contempt, enforcement, and modification.  In February of 2012, by agreement of 
the parties, the court (Driscoll, J.) appointed a guardian ad litem for the parties’ 
minor child to assist the court in planning for the child’s needs.  After the final 
hearing on the motions, the court found Martin in contempt for failing to comply 
with the divorce judgment’s counseling requirements.  It found, inter alia, that 
Martin’s behavior demonstrated “his continued attempts to ignore the court orders 
in place and do what he pleases in spite of the negative impact upon his son’s 
emotional health.”  
[¶4]  On September 12, 2012, the court issued an amended divorce judgment 
reducing Martin’s contact with his child to three Sundays per month and ordering 
that even this contact was “conditioned upon Kevin’s enrollment in the Violence 
No More BIP [Batterer’s Intervention Program] within 30 days.”  The judgment 
also provided that, “[u]pon proof of successful completion” of the program, 
Martin’s contact with the child would revert to the schedule outlined in the 2010 
divorce judgment.  We affirmed the amended judgment.  Remick v. Martin, 
Mem-13-66 (June 11, 2013).   
 
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[¶5]  In July of 2013, Remick moved to “stay the contempt order” and 
further modify the divorce judgment.  Martin responded in opposition to the 
motion, and the court (Foster, J.) scheduled a conference for September 16.  On 
that date, Martin filed motions for contempt and to enforce.  He asserted that 
although he had provided Remick with proof of his completion of the Violence No 
More program, she had failed to permit his contact with their child to revert to the 
schedule created by the 2010 divorce judgment.  During the conference, the court 
ordered Remick’s counsel to prepare a release for Martin’s signature that would 
notify the director of the Violence No More program that Martin was permitting 
the director to speak with Remick’s attorney.  
[¶6]  On November 4, 2013, the court conducted a hearing on Martin’s 
pending motions.  In its order on the motions, issued just over a month later, the 
court found that Martin “continues to engage in controlling behavior similar to that 
which caused the [c]ourt concern in the summer of 2012” and, therefore, Martin 
failed to show “successful completion” of the Violence No More program as 
required by the 2012 amended judgment.  In response to a motion by Martin, the 
court issued further findings on January 14, 2014.  Among its other findings, the 
court supported its conclusion that Martin’s behavior had not changed by finding 
that, even after completing the Violence No More program, Martin had filed a 
criminal complaint against Remick’s parents when they accompanied Remick to an 
 
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exchange of the child and had failed to comply with the court’s order to provide a 
release for Remick’s attorney to speak with the director of the Violence No More 
program.  Martin timely appealed.  
II.  DISCUSSION 
[¶7]  Martin challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the 
court’s factual findings regarding his failure to successfully complete the Violence 
No More program, on which the court relied in denying Martin increased contact 
with his child.  We review for clear error the court’s factual findings, and we 
review the court’s ultimate decision on the motion for an abuse of discretion.  
Charette v. Charette, 2013 ME 4, ¶ 15, 60 A.3d 1264.  Clear error exists and 
requires reversal of a finding if 
(1) there is no competent evidence in the record to support it, or (2) it 
is based on a clear misapprehension by the trial court of the meaning 
of the evidence, or (3) the force and effect of the evidence, taken as a 
total entity, rationally persuades to a certainty that the finding is so 
against the great preponderance of the believable evidence that it does 
not represent the truth and right of the case. 
 
In re A.M., 2012 ME 118, ¶ 29, 55 A.3d 463 (quotation marks omitted). 
 
[¶8]  On appeal, we have the benefit of transcripts of the September 16, 
2013, conference and the November 4, 2013, hearing.  Those transcripts 
demonstrate that several of the facts on which the court denied Martin relief were 
not supported by the record evidence.  First, the court’s finding that Martin filed a 
 
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criminal complaint against Remick’s parents after completing the Violence No 
More Program in 2013 reflects a misapprehension of Remick’s testimony.  
Remick’s testimony, although somewhat confusing, is that Martin filed that 
complaint before the issuance of the amended divorce judgment.  Remick concedes 
that the court’s finding misstates the timing of the incident.  The timing of this 
event is critical because the court used this specific evidence of Martin’s behavior 
in concluding that he had not successfully completed the Batterers’ Intervention 
Program. 
[¶9]  In addition, the finding that Martin refused to comply with a court 
order to provide a release for the director of the Violence No More program is not 
supported by the record.  During the September 16, 2013, conference, the court 
ordered Remick’s attorney to draft a release for Martin’s signature and to share the 
release with Martin before sending it to the director.  The attorney did not follow 
this order.  Instead, Remick’s attorney emailed the director immediately after the 
September 16, 2013, hearing to inform him of the November 4, 2013, hearing and 
to ensure that a release would be signed.  On November 4, 2013, Remick’s 
attorney stated to the court that the director indicated in his reply email that he 
would take care of the release.  On cross-examination by Remick’s attorney, the 
director stated that he did have Martin sign a release on October 30, 2013.  
Nevertheless, Remick’s attorney was unaware that Martin signed a release before 
 
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the November 4, 2013, hearing and, as a result, did not have access to the director 
prior to the hearing.  In its findings, the court, apparently misremembering its order 
to Remick’s attorney to share the release with Martin before sending it to the 
director, stated that the court “did not direct” Remick’s attorney to prepare a 
release for Martin to sign and that Martin “refused to sign” the release.  Again, 
Remick concedes that her attorney was directed to prepare the release.  Because 
the court did order Remick’s attorney to provide Martin with a release and 
Remick’s attorney failed to do so, the court’s determination that Martin had refused to 
sign a release is not supported by the record. 
[¶10]  These findings were not supported by competent evidence, and, 
therefore, they should not have been used by the court to determine that Martin had 
failed to successfully complete the program.  Because these unsupported findings 
did form the basis of the court’s conclusion, they are not harmless errors.  See 
Shaw v. Packard, 2005 ME 122, ¶ 13, 886 A.2d 1287 (“Any alleged error of the 
trial court that does not affect the substantial rights of a party is harmless and 
therefore must be disregarded.”).  We therefore vacate the judgment and remand 
the matter to the District Court for it to reconsider its decision in the absence of 
these unsupported findings.  See Cole v. Cole, 561 A.2d 1018, 1021 (Me. 1989) 
 
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(remanding a divorce judgment for a reconsideration based on the clear error of 
one factual finding regarding the value of a pension fund).1 
The entry is: 
Judgment vacated.  Remanded for reconsideration 
on the record as already established.    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                         
1  Martin did not raise the issue of whether the court correctly interpreted the amended judgment.  If he 
had, we would have reviewed de novo whether the amended judgment’s requirement of successful 
completion is “reasonably susceptible to different interpretations and therefore ambiguous.”  Ramsdell v. 
Worden, 2011 ME 55, ¶ 17, 17 A.3d 1224.   
 
“When a judgment is unambiguous, it must be enforced in accordance with the plain meaning of the 
language in the judgment.  Courts may not, under the guise of a clarification order, make a material 
change that modifies the provisions of the original judgment.”  Burnell v. Burnell, 2012 ME 24, ¶ 15, 
40 A.3d 390 (quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted); see also Ramsdell v. Worden, 2011 ME 55, 
¶ 17, 17 A.3d 1224.   
 
When a judgment is ambiguous “[w]e will . . . review a court's clarification of an ambiguity in a 
judgment for abuse of discretion.”  Thompson v. Rothman, 2002 ME 39, ¶ 7, 791 A.2d 921.  “The focus 
of this review will remain whether the court's construction of its prior judgment is consistent with its 
language read as a whole and is objectively supported by the record.”  Id. ¶ 8 (quotation marks omitted).  
We would also have weighed whether “the same judge who issued the original judgment also made the 
clarification,” and we would have reviewed factual findings based on extrinsic evidence for clear error.  
Id.   
 
It appears from the judgment before us that the court did find “successful completion” to be 
ambiguous and interpreted “successful completion” to require that “Mr. Martin understood his actions 
constituted abuse and was prepared to make the changes necessary to avoid repeated instances of such 
behavior.”  On remand, the court may choose to revisit whether the amended judgment’s requirement of 
“successful completion” is ambiguous and, if so, what the court interprets the “successful completion” 
provision to require.   
 
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On the briefs: 
 
Kevin Martin, appellant pro se 
 
Timothy E. Robbins, Esq., South Portland, for appellee Cynthia 
(Martin) Remick 
 
 
 
Biddeford District Court docket number FM-2008-346 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY