Opinion ID: 755762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Erna's May 1, 1992 Removal of Elizabeth from the United States

Text: 8 During the pendency of the custody proceedings, notwithstanding the orders not to remove her daughters from northwest Florida, Erna made preparations to take the girls to Iceland. In March 1992, she obtained provisional passports at the Icelandic Consulate in Tallahassee, Florida, to replace those impounded by the court. The Icelandic provisional passports were issued in the names Erna Eyjolfsdottir, Elizabeth Jeanne Pittman, and Anna Nicole Grayson. 9 In early April, Erna's then-boyfriend, defendant Helgi Hilmarsson, made an airline reservation for himself, through an Icelandair sales agent in New York, to fly on May 2, 1992, from Florida to John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK Airport) in New York, and from there on Icelandair Flight 614 to Keflavik Airport in Iceland. On April 10, reservations for the same flights were made through an Icelandair sales agent in Iceland for three additional passengers, under the names Ms. S. Hilmarsson, Child A Hilmarsson, and Child B Hilmarsson. The Icelandair tickets corresponding to these three reservations were paid for in Iceland on April 18 by credit card registered to defendant Gudmundur Karl Jonsson, Erna's stepfather. 10 During the weekend of April 17-19, Grayson became aware that Erna, Anna, and Elizabeth had disappeared. Suspecting that Erna would attempt to return to Iceland with the girls, Grayson alerted Frederick and undertook to prevent Erna from leaving the country. On Monday April 20, Grayson telephoned the Baltimore-Washington and Orlando, Florida offices of Icelandair. He spoke with Icelandair representatives (whom he could not identify by name or title at trial), told them of his fear that Erna would attempt to leave the country, and told them there was a court order prohibiting Erna from taking the girls out of northwest Florida. Grayson asked whether Icelandair had reservations under the names Erna Eyjolfsdottir or Pittman or Grayson or Etta or Ron Matlack, Elizabeth Jeanne[ ]Pittman or Anna Nicole Grayson, and was told that Icelandair did not have a reservation under any of those names. (Trial Transcript (Tr.) 44.) In an effort to enlist the airline's aid in stopping Erna from leaving the country, Grayson gave the employees with whom he spoke physical descriptions of Erna, Anna, and Elizabeth, and said that Erna and the girls would probably be traveling under false names. Grayson testified that this was the substance of his conversation with both the Baltimore-Washington and Orlando offices of Icelandair. 11 On April 24, four days after Grayson's calls to Icelandair, the Hilmarsson May 2 reservations were altered in several respects. The passengers' names were changed from Hilmarsson to Karlsson; the flights between Florida and New York were cancelled; and the departure date from JFK Airport to Keflavik was advanced to May 1. On May 1, Erna, Hilmarsson, Anna, and Elizabeth arrived at JFK Airport, checked in under the name Karlsson, and flew to Iceland on Flight 614. Elizabeth, who was then 10 years old, has remained in Iceland; Frederick has not seen his daughter since. 12 In 1993, Frederick, on behalf of himself and as the legal representative of Elizabeth, commenced the present action in New York state court against Erna, Icelandair, Hilmarsson, and Jonsson, alleging that they had conspired to remove Elizabeth from the United States in violation of Frederick's custody rights. Icelandair removed the action to federal court on the basis of diversity jurisdiction. The individual defendants failed to answer or otherwise appear, and plaintiffs proceeded against Icelandair, asserting claims of intentional interference with parental custody, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and negligence. 13