Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-08-02161/USCOURTS-ca7-08-02161-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 

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Œ With notation that opinion would follow.

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 08-2161

JOSE GREGORIO ALTAMIRANDA VALE,

Petitioner-Appellee,

v.

MARIA JOSE FIGUERA AVILA,

Respondent-Appellant.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of Illinois.

No. 06 CV 1246—Joe Billy McDade, Judge.

____________

ARGUED JULY 16, 2008—DECIDED JULY 17, 2008Œ

____________

Before POSNER, FLAUM, and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The petitioner, Vale, seeking

the return of his children to Venezuela, filed suit in federal district court against their mother—Avila, his exwife—under the International Child Abduction

Remedies Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 11601 et seq. The Act, implementing the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of

International Child Abduction, T.I.A.S. No. 11,670, 1343

U.N.T.S. 89 (Oct. 25, 1980) (which both the United States

and Venezuela have signed), entitles a person whose

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2 No. 08-2161

child has been wrongfully removed to the United States

(usually by a parent) in violation of the Hague Convention

to sue the wrongdoer in federal court for the return of the

child. 42 U.S.C. § 11603(b). The suit is begun by the filing

of a petition rather than a complaint. 42 U.S.C. § 11603(b).

Wrongful removal is defined as removal “in breach of

rights of custody” vested in the party complaining of the

removal. Hague Convention, Art. 3(a). These rights include

“rights relating to the care of the person of the child and,

in particular, the right to determine the child’s place

of residence.” Id., Art. 5(a). The Convention also

recognizes “rights of access,” but they are limited to “the

right to take a child for a limited period of time to a

place other than the child’s habitual residence,” id.,

Art 5(b), and the violation of them is not deemed

wrongful removal. Vale prevailed in the district court,

which ordered the return of the children to Venezuela.

We stayed the district court’s order pending our decision

of Avila’s appeal.

The Convention seeks to discourage abductions by

parents who either having lost, or expecting to lose, a

custody battle remove children to a country whose

courts are more likely to side with that parent. Kijowska v.

Haines, 463 F.3d 583, 586 (7th Cir. 2006); Blondin v. Dubois,

189 F.3d 240, 246 (2d Cir. 1999). To prevent such forum

shopping, the Convention requires that the determination

of whether the child’s removal was wrongful be made

under the laws of the country in which the child has his or

her “habitual residence.” Hague Convention, Art. 3. The

determination of “habitual residence” is to be based on the

everyday meaning of these words rather than on the legal

meaning that a particular jurisdiction attaches to them.

Otherwise forum shopping would come in by the back

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No. 08-2161 3

door—the removing parent would remove the child to a

jurisdiction that would define “habitual residence” favorably to the parent. Kijowska v. Haines, supra, 463 F.3d at

586. Should the courts of a nation that is not the child’s

habitual residence award custody to the parent who is not

entitled to it under the law of the child’s habitual residence, the custody decree is not a defense to an order

to return the child. Hague Convention, Art. 17.

The parties, Venezuelan citizens, were married in

Venezuela in 1999 and the following year Avila gave

birth to twins. But later she met an American man on the

Internet and in 2005 asked Vale for a divorce. The parties

divorced that year by mutual agreement. The divorce

decree gave Avila physical custody of the children but

gave both parents the right (and duty) of patria potestas.

That is Latin for “paternal power,” and in Roman law

denoted the father’s absolute right (including the right of

life and death) over his wife, children, and other subordinate family members. Much modified, it survives as a

legal doctrine in civil law countries, such as Venezuela,

where it is defined (so far as bears on this case) as “all the

duties and rights of the parents in relationship to their

children who have not reached majority, regarding the

care, development and education of their children.” Ley

Orgánica para la Protección del Niño y del Adolescente

[Organic Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents], tit. IV, ch. 2, § 1, art. 347. The duties and rights

“include the physical custody, representation and administration of the property of the minor child(ren) subject

to such authority.” Id., art. 348. (The translation into

English is by a translator hired by Vale, but Avila does not

question its accuracy; nor shall we. We have not found an

official translation.) The divorce decree also gave Vale

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4 No. 08-2161

unlimited visitation rights, custody of the children for two

weekends a month, and the right of ne exeat, another

civil law doctrine, whereby his consent was required before the children could leave the country. Id., § 5, art. 392.

The following year, Avila asked Vale for his consent to

her taking the children with her to attend a wedding in

Florida. She told him they’d be gone from Venezuela

for only five days. She lied. She was moving to the United

States with the children in order to marry the man she

had met through the Internet. Vale agreed to let her take

the kids to Florida for the wedding. She took them to

Peoria, Illinois, and married her Internet pal.

Vale filed a petition for the children’s return under

the Hague Convention. The district judge conducted an

evidentiary hearing at which Vale testified and on crossexamination denied, in response to a question by Avila’s

lawyer, that he had struck his son with a video-game cord.

After Vale rested his case, Avila’s lawyer suggested to the

judge that the parties try to work out a settlement. Avila

and her new husband met with Vale and proposed that the

children be allowed to stay in the United States but spend

every summer, every spring vacation, and every other

Christmas vacation with their father in Venezuela, and

that because Vale (who has a serious disability) has a low

income, while Avila’s new husband has (he said) an

income of between $100,000 and $150,000 a year, Avila with

his help would pay the children’s travel expenses.

The parties signed an agreement containing these terms.

A provision captioned “resumption of Hague proceedings”

states that if Avila fails to comply with the terms of the

agreement, Vale “can refile a Hague Petition in either

State or Federal court in the United States to seek the reCase: 08-2161 Document: 25 Filed: 08/11/2008 Pages: 10
No. 08-2161 5

turn of the children.” Avila argues that the next sentence

of the provision, which states that until a certain date

she could not raise a statute of limitations defense in a

resumed federal suit and that for purposes of such a

suit the children’s habitual residence would be deemed

Venezuela (for that is what it was before Avila removed

them to the United States), somehow barred resumption

of the suit; we cannot begin to understand the argument.

The settlement agreement provided that the children’s

habitual residence was now Illinois and that Vale would

dismiss his suit, which he did. Avila submitted a copy

of the agreement to an Illinois court, which issued an

uncontested judgment declaring in accordance with the

agreement that the children were now habitual residents

of Illinois. But Avila did not comply with the duties that

the settlement agreement placed on her, and so this

year Vale returned to the federal district court in which he

had filed his Hague Convention petition and moved the

judge to set aside the judgment dismissing his suit, on the

ground that the judgment had been procured by fraud,

and to reinstate the suit. Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(3). The judge

conducted an evidentiary hearing at the conclusion of

which he set aside the judgment, finding on ample evidence that Avila had lied when she had told Vale in the

settlement negotiations that she would finance the children’s travel to Venezuela and later when she told him

that the children could not travel outside the United

States because they were not yet lawful residents; they

were.

The judge proceeded to the merits of Vale’s petition for

the return of the children under the Hague Convention,

conducted an evidentiary hearing, and concluded that the

removal of the children to the United States had indeed

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6 No. 08-2161

violated the father’s “rights of custody.” So he ordered

the children sent to Vale in Venezuela, precipitating

this appeal by Avila.

Avila’s main argument is that the district court

lacked jurisdiction to reopen the Hague Convention

proceeding because of the recital in the state court judgment that the children are habitual residents of Illinois.

Illinois law does not have the doctrines of patria potestas

or ne exeat, so (we may assume) if the recital is conclusive

of Vale’s rights, he loses because the rights of custody on

which his claim is based are founded on those doctrines

and so his claim fails unless the children’s habitual residence is Venezuela. Avila argues that a federal court

cannot wrest jurisdiction from a state court, that the

state court judgment is entitled to full faith and credit,

that the reopening of the federal suit was barred by the

Rooker-Feldman doctrine (the doctrine that only the U.S.

Supreme Court can review a state court judgment), and

that, at the very least, the district court should have

abstained in favor of the state court proceeding.

None of these arguments holds water. Rule 60(b) has

the force of a federal statute, and federal statutes

override conflicting state law. A federal court can set aside

a judgment by it that was procured by fraud, and the

effect is to reinstate the proceeding that the judgment

had concluded. Ditto v. McCurdy, 510 F.3d 1070, 1077 (9th

Cir. 2007); 12 James Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice

¶ 60.20 (3d ed. 1997). What then happens in the resumed

proceeding may be affected by a parallel state court

proceeding or judgment, but that depends on the circumstances. In this case, there was no litigation in the state

court, no contest, no significant judicial involvement at

all. All that happened was that the parties petitioned the

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No. 08-2161 7

state court to register “a foreign custody judgment” and the

court responded by ordering the clerk of the court to

“register and enroll” the Venezuelan divorce decree and

the settlement agreement. The state court was not asked to

and did not make a determination that the settlement

was proper, although the judgment does contain a recital

that the agreement to register and enroll the foreign

judgment was not “unconscionable.” No evidence of fraud

had come to light when the settlement agreement was

registered in the state court. Nor in the reopened federal

proceeding was Vale asking the district judge to enjoin

the state court proceeding or judgment. He was asking

that the children be returned to Venezuela pursuant to a

treaty (the Hague Convention) that, like its implementing

statute, overrides a state custody decree. Article 17 of the

Convention is explicit about this override, and anyway

a treaty implemented by a federal statute overrides a

state law or judgment. U.S. Const., art. VI, cl. 2; Medellin v.

Texas, 128 S. Ct. 1346, 1365 (2008); Missouri v. Holland,

252 U.S. 416, 432, 435 (1920) (Holmes, J.).

The settlement agreement itself authorizes Vale to

resume his Hague Convention suit if Avila violated it, and

she did—and the agreement is part of the state court

judgment. So all other considerations to one side, that

judgment could not be violated by the reopening of

the suit, or by the judgment rendered by the district

court after the reopening, since implicit in the state

court judgment authorizing the reopening was the possibility that the result would be an order under the Hague

Convention that the children be sent back to Venezuela.

So the district court had jurisdiction over Vale’s petition

and the question on the merits is whether Avila’s removal

of the children to Illinois violated Vale’s “rights of cusCase: 08-2161 Document: 25 Filed: 08/11/2008 Pages: 10
8 No. 08-2161

tody” under Venezuelan law and was therefore in violation of the Hague Convention, since before she removed

them to the United States, Venezuela was unquestionably their habitual residence. The Convention does not

speak simply of “custody,” but of “rights of custody,”

and these are broadly defined to include “rights relating

to the care of the person of the child and, in particular,

the right to determine the child’s place of residence.” To

include: so the enumeration is not necessarily exhaustive.

By virtue of the doctrine of patria potestas, Vale, the father,

had rights relating to the care of the person of the

child, and, by virtue both of that doctrine and even more

clearly by virtue of the doctrine of ne exeat, the right to

determine that the child’s place of residence would

remain Venezuela rather than the United States.

No more is necessary to establish that Vale had “rights

of custody,” which Avila infringed. Furnes v. Reeves, 362

F.3d 702, 714-16 (11th Cir. 2004); Whallon v. Lynn, 230 F.3d

450, 458-59 (1st Cir. 2000); In re B. del C.S.B., 525 F. Supp. 2d

1182, 1196 (C.D. Cal. 2007); Garcia v. Angarita, 440 F. Supp.

2d 1364, 1378-79 (S.D. Fla. 2006); Gil v. Rodriguez, 184 F.

Supp. 2d 1221, 1225 (M.D. Fla. 2002). Several cases, it is

true—Villegas Duran v. Arribada Beaumont, Nos. 02-55079,

02-55120, 2008 WL 2780656, at *4 (2d Cir. July 18, 2008);

Fawcett v. McRoberts, 326 F.3d 491, 499-500 (4th Cir. 2003),

and Croll v. Croll, 229 F.3d 133, 138-41 (2d Cir. 2000)—hold

that the doctrine of ne exeat does not create a right of

custody, reasoning that if it did the effect would be to

send the child to a parent who did not have custodial

rights but merely a right to prevent the child from being

removed to another jurisdiction. That is a fair point, though

cutting against it is the invitation to abduction that is

tendered if a parent can violate ne exeat with impunity.

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No. 08-2161 9

But we need not decide whether the doctrine of ne exeat

creates custody rights, for in none of the cases that answer

the question in the negative did the plaintiff also have the

right of patria potestas. Only Gonzalez v. Gutierrez, 311 F.3d

942 (9th Cir. 2002), is cited for the proposition that patria

potestas does not confer a custody right, and all that that

case actually holds (besides that the doctrine of ne exeat

does not by itself create a right of custody) is that patria

potestas is a default doctrine and hence does not override

rights conferred by a valid custody agreement between the

parents. Id. at 954. (The father in Gonzales had access

rights as well as ne exeat, but not patria potestas.) There is no

such override here. The divorce decree gave Avila

physical custody of the children subject to Vale’s right of

patria potestas. It provided: “The Father and the Mother

shall both EXERCISE THE PATRIA POTESTAS over our

children as we have been doing and as established by the

Law. The aforementioned children shall remain under the

Guard of the mother, with whom they are currently living.”

When the parent who does not receive physical custody

is given the rights and duties of patria potestas, he has

custody rights within the meaning of the Hague Convention.

So the cases we cited earlier hold, none to the contrary,

and we think they are right. The rights and duties of patria

potestas are so extensive that a parent given them is

thereby denoted a fit custodial parent (as may not be

the case when the parent is merely given the right of ne

exeat), even if, when both parents are holders, one is likely

to have physical custody, as otherwise the children will

be shuttled back and forth between two homes (“joint

custody”), which can be, on balance, a bad thing, depending on the circumstances. Robert E. Emery, Marriage,

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10 No. 08-2161

Divorce, and Children’s Adjustment 79-81 (2d ed. 1999);

Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis & Sandra Blakeslee,

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study

215-16 (2000); Jann Blackstone-Ford, The Custody Solutions

Sourcebook 102 (1999).

So Vale has a prima facie right to have the children

returned to Venezuela. Article 13(b) of the Hague Convention excuses return, however, if the abductor proves by

clear and convincing evidence (42 U.S.C. § 11603(e)(2)(A))

that “there is a grave risk that [the child’s] return would

expose the child to physical or psychological harm or

otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.” The

evidence presented in the district court on this question,

mainly the contested assertion that Vale once struck his

son with a video-game cord, fell short of meeting this

demanding burden. See Gaudin v. Remis, 415 F.3d 1028,

1036-37 (9th Cir. 2005); Whallon v. Lynn, supra, 230 F.3d at

459-60; compare Van De Sande v. Van De Sande, 431 F.3d 567

(7th Cir. 2005); Baran v. Beaty, 526 F.3d 1340, 1345-46 (11th

Cir. 2008); Simcox v. Simcox, 511 F.3d 594, 604-08 (6th Cir.

2007); In re Application of Adan, 437 F.3d 381, 395-97 (3d Cir.

2006); Walsh v. Walsh, 221 F.3d 204, 219-20 (1st Cir. 2000).

Or so at least the district judge could find without being

thought to have committed a clear error.

AFFIRMED.

8-11-08

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