Court Opinion

ID: 9794936
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:14:29.432904+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:22:28.695399
License: Public Domain

SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON REHEARING
On petition for rehearing, plaintiff in error contends that the opinion heretofore promulgated herein is contrary to Crawford v. Young, Okl., 397 P.2d 497, in which we held:
“3. When a district court in a divorce proceeding fixed custody of minor child involved and such order was final arid not appealed from, the court was without jurisdiction to order the matter transferred to the juvenile court for investiga*482tion and disposition of custody, and proceedings attempted in such juvenile court were without authority of law.” (emphasis added)
It will be remembered that, in the present case, the Juvenile Court of Tulsa County first assumed jurisdiction over the Harris children’s custody, and they were made wards of said court, and sent to the Whitaker State Home for their “care and protection, until further order of the Court” under said court’s temporary order of July 29, 1960. Said court thereafter retained, and exercised, that jurisdiction continuously, specifically refusing to relinquish it by including “until further order of the Court” provisions in its subsequent orders, until long past the filing, in the District Court, of Mr. Harris’ petition for divorce on August 5, 1963, and the trial of that divorce action in October of that year, and until entry of the Juvenile Court’s order of January 10, 1964, placing (permanent) custody of the children in the Department of Public Welfare, which said order was thereafter appealed to the District Court for trial de novo, and out of which trial de novo the present appeal arose.
The District Court’s order of October 1, 1963, in the Harris divorce case, finding that “the question” of the children’s custody “should be referred to the Juvenile Court” may reasonably be construed as a recognition, by the divorce court, of the Juvenile Court’s previous assumption of jurisdiction over that matter, and is computable with the long established rule in this jurisdiction that when a court of concurrent jurisdiction has assumed jurisdiction over a case, its authority over it, subject to review by the appellate court, is exclusive until the case is entirely disposed of, and no other court of concurrent jurisdiction may interfere with the first court in the handling and disposing of the litigation. Crawford v. Young, supra; Woolley v. Shaw, 192 Okl. 107, 136 P.2d 398, syllabus 1; 20 Am.Jur.2d, Courts § 128, p. 481. Jurisdiction of a court once acquired is not lost, or divested, by subsequent events. Pine v. Superior Court of Seminole County, 172 Okl. 70, 39 P.2d 530; 21 C.J.S. Courts §§ 93, 94, pp. 143 and 147.
As will be observed, the foregoing facts clearly distinguish this case from those in Crawford v. Young, supra, in which there had been no juvenile court proceedings prior to the divorce court’s order certifying, to that court, the matter of the custody of the child there involved. And the above demonstrates that plaintiff in error’s theory that the commencement of the Harris divorce action divested the Juvenile Court of its jurisdiction over the Harris children’s custody, is without merit.
We adhere to the previous opinion promulgated in this case, and the petition for rehearing is denied.
All Justices concur.