Court Opinion

ID: 9674937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:37:35.214425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:30.321330
License: Public Domain

DRAUGHN, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I would hold the trial court abused his discretion in refusing to allow the appellant to testify or present witnesses in her behalf. Surely, the trial judge has in his procedural arsenal of sanctions a weapon less devastating than that which takes away the right of a mother to testify and defend herself in a proceeding aimed at taking custody of her child from her.
As the majority opinion aptly points out, the standard for discovery sanctions is whether they are “just.” Tex.R.Civ.P. 215(2)(b)(5). The trial judge abuses his discretion only if the imposed sanctions are not just. “Just” means they are not excessive and there is a direct relationship between the offensive conduct and the sanctions imposed. Chrysler Corp. v. Backmon, 841 S.W.2d 844, 849 (Tex.1992). In other well-used words from a different context, “the punishment must fit the crime.”
I cannot conceive of a more excessive and less “just” sanction than to refuse to allow a mother in a custody proceeding to testify in her own behalf. The effect of such a sanction is, by analogy to the criminal law, equivalent to a civil death penalty. While admittedly the comparison is mixed and hyperbolic, it is not too much so, because if a litigant’s pleadings are struck and she, or he, is stripped of the right to personally testify and defend against a loss of child custody, then that person is legally “naked” in the courtroom contest. The Texas Supreme Court characterized such a sanction as “the most devastating a trial court can assess against a party.” TransAmerican Natural Gas v. Powell, 811 S.W.2d 913, 917-918 (Tex.1991). And although not raised here, the Trans-American opinion referred to the constitutional limitations upon the power of courts in carrying out their procedural processes to deny a party an opportunity to defend a case on the merits, ibid,., 918.
The majority opinion and the attorney ad litem (the offended party in this case) minimize the sanction by pointing out that, unlike the TmnsAmerican case, the trial court here refi'ained from granting a requested default judgment against the appellant. With all due deference to that line of de minimus comparison, I find it a distinction without a real difference. Here, Mrs. Eason was allowed only to observe a hearing where her rights to custody of her son were in the balance, but she was not allowed to present any tangible evidence, any witnesses, or to testify in her own behalf. The critical issue was her behavior as a parent, yet, she was not allowed to defend herself. True, her attorney was allowed to cross-examine the witnesses for the appellee, but the real party whose conduct was being challenged, appellant, was forced to stand mute. Technically, the proceeding was not a default judgment, but in its effect on appellant, it was a mirror image of one. When the judge prevents the key party whose conduct is the prime issue from testifying, a skeleton trial results.
A chronology of the procedural events culminating in the judgment to take custody of appellant’s son from her, is enlightening. Appellant and appellee were divorced on *192May 16, 1987. Custody of their son was awarded to appellant. The record reflects that child support in the original divorce decree was specified as $400.00 per month. But appellee admitted that he only paid $850.00 per month and refused to pay the additional amount. In March of 1990, appellant petitioned the court for what should have been almost a pro forma decision to require him to pay what he was legally obligated to pay.
Because of the twisting legal maze that followed, appellant’s attempt to obtain the correct and increased child support turned out to be a terrible precipitating mistake on her part. Her ex-husband responded, not by offering to pay the correct and delinquent amount of child support that was due, but by filing a petition to change custody of the child to him. The downward legal spiral for appellant began. First, the two actions were consolidated and an attorney ad litem was appointed by the court. Then the court ordered the parties to deposit $2,000.00 as an advance against the anticipated attorney’s fees for the ad litem. Appellee, whose monthly salary as a Senior Lab Technician for Anadrill/Schluberger was approximately $3,200.00, promptly paid his portion. Appellant failed to promptly pay her portion of the ad litem deposit. The record shows that she injured her back on the job and was receiving weekly worker’s compensation payments.
At this point the court intervened to strike appellant’s pleadings for increased child support because of her failure to pay her portion of the ad litem fees. To seek money to which one is legally entitled, one must first have money. Thus, the initial legal circle was completed around appellant. Disabled, she had simply sought an increase in child support to which she was legally entitled, and because her husband sued for custody, she was ordered to pay advance ad litem fees. Because she could not pay, her pleadings for the child support she was due, were struck. All that remained then was her husband’s suit to take custody of the child from her. In need of money to support her child, she had sought a legal increase in child support. Because she needed money, she had no money to pay the ad litem fee; because she had no money to pay, her pleadings seeking money were struck.
To round out this circular legal logic — at the time appellant’s pleadings for increased child support were struck, her ex-husband was admittedly delinquent in legal child support due in the amount of $50 per month for a total of 39 months, or $1,950.00, more than enough to pay the $500 ad litem fee she owed. The final irony: he was free at this time to continue to pay the reduced child support without fear of legal sanction. Meanwhile the ad litem fees would continue to accrue in his suit for custody. Appellant thus found herself out of court because of lack of funds, and back in court facing a custody battle which required more funds. All because she filed suit for money legally due her.
The next legal scenario was the first trial on appellee’s custody petition in January, 1991. At this hearing, the trial court acknowledged the incorrectness of the child support that had been paid by appellee for the preceding three years and eight months. That calculates out to a total of $2,200 he owed in child support at the time of the trial — considerably more than enough to pay appellant’s share of the ad litem attorney’s fees. The trial judge, sensing this injustice, at first ordered the child support to be increased to the correct amount, $400.00 per month, but then reversed himself because that matter was not technically before the court. Indeed, it was not, because he had stricken her pleadings for the child support increase because she had failed to pay her $500 portion of the advance ad litem fee deposit. To complete the legal scenario, the judge entered a limited order of temporary joint custody of the child and an additional $1,000 for ad litem attorney fees to be paid equally by the parties.
No final judgment was entered at this time because the court, in effect, declared a mistrial. This was caused by appellant’s attorney who apparently violated a prior court order that the parties and their counsel were not to discuss the case with the child. No sanction was imposed against appellant’s attorney. Appellant was subsequently able to pay some of the ad litem fees.
*193Sixty days prior to the second and final trial, the attorney ad litem filed extensive interrogatories and requests for production of documents. Among the interrogatories were questions such as:
Have you engaged in sexual intercourse with anyone since the date of divorce? If so, state with whom, where it occurred, when it occurred, and where KEVIN LEE EASON was at the time of the occurrence.
Other interrogatories asked her to list “every reason why” her ex-husband “should not be named sole managing conservator” and to “List and describe” all the parenting skills of herself and her ex-husband. Other questions inquired about her job, salary, and her male relationships. The Request for Production of Documents, twenty in number, asked for extensive school records for her son for the last six years, copies of all letters and memoran-da between her and her ex-husband, sound recordings, birth certificate of the child and other data.
Appellant failed to answer and produce timely. Her attorney made no effort to explain or communicate with the ad litem about the completion of these discovery requests. In fact, the record reflects that appellant’s attorney announced in open court to the judge that he had not filed the answers on behalf of appellant, because “he had been fishing the bay.”
As the majority opinion points out, the parties agree the appellant responded in some manner to the discovery requests, but the record does not contain those responses. I make no apology for the Appellant’s failure to fully and timely respond, her attorney’s “bay fishing” notwithstanding. But I also suggest this record reflects that the harm done to the offended party, the attorney ad litem, did not rise to the level that required she be prohibited from testifying in her own defense.
In fact, most of the information sought by the ad litem was obtained and presented at the hearing by the appellee-husband, and the record reflects that the ad litem had visited and conducted an interview with appellant. As evidenced by the ad litem’s considerable pleadings in this ease and her extensive arguments, she was certainly aware of the negative aspects of the appellant’s life and circumstances, as was the appellee-husband. It is the positive side, appellant’s side, that was omitted by court’s sanction which had been so ardently sought by the ad litem and appel-lee. I note that much of the appellee’s trial testimony complaining about appellant’s parenting related to incidents in the past, of which he was aware but did very little about until appellant filed for an increase in child support. Most of the incidents he complained about occurred during the time he was paying the unilaterally reduced child support to her.
This case is a prime example why our discovery sanctions should not be automatically and intractably applied so as to deny a person the opportunity to testify, except in the rarest of cases. I do not need to recite the variety of less harsh sanctions the trial court could have imposed. This has been ably done in the concurring opinion in the TmnsAmerican case. See TransAmerican Natural Gas v. Powell, 811 S.W.2d 913; 920-922. In this case, because of the original mistrial caused by him and his “bay fishing” comments, the court could have directed some portion of the sanctions at the original attorney for appellant. Appellant was without transportation, resided 150 miles from Houston, and necessarily, she relied heavily on her attorney. He certainly should bear some responsibility for what occurred.
Unlike most of the sanction cases cited, the court was not here dealing with two large corporations or seasoned businessmen who were battling at arms length in a complicated business dispute, represented by several counsel. This is one woman, an unskilled worker on disability relief, who entered the legal arena belatedly and reluctantly to simply receive the child support to which she was legally entitled, and who ended up in a complicated legal battle for custody of her child with both hands tied. She lost, not because a full airing of her side was inadequate, but largely because of lack of sufficient funds and because of her counsel’s actions and inactions which left her legally handicapped.
*194I conclude that a full and fair hearing was not allowed in this case. There is ample credit for this result to be shared among the other participants. In my opinion, the attorney ad litem, instead of aggressively seeking to stifle the appellant by sanctions at trial, would have better served the court and enlightened the issue to be decided by seeking to have full and complete testimony by appellant. After all, is not that what we should all be seeking in such a serious matter — a full and complete hearing for all sides?
Admittedly, appellant was not totally without fault and some sanction was appropriate, but to deny her the fundamental right to testify in the most important trial a mother must endure was, in my opinion, unjust, excessive, and just plain wrong under the circumstances of this case. I do not know whether the appellant’s testimony would have changed the result. She may still have lost the custody of her son. Nor can I predict on a retrial that she would prevail. I can only say that she was entitled to defend herself by telling her side of the issue. Fairness dictates that as a minimum, and we should accept no less.
I find the trial court abused his discretion in imposing this devastating sanction and would reverse and remand for a new trial.