Court Opinion

ID: 9548213
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:59:44.272173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:38.436522
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE DAVIS:
I dissent.
Without heeding the admonition of this court in State ex rel. Cash v. District Court, 58 Mont. 316, 195 Pac. 549, the judge below permitted the appellant to take the three children, whose custody is the issue here, out of Montana upon her promise given him to return them to his jurisdiction for the hearing on the merits fixed for May 10, 1954. Thereby the lower court in effect abdicated its jurisdiction in the matter, as we said in the Cash case; for with the mother (appellant here) and the children in Oregon the Montana court could not enforce or otherwise make effective any order or judgment it might make when the case was finally disposed of.
And such precisely was the position in which the trial court found itself when its decree was entered on May 15, 1954, among other things, awarding the custody of these children to the father, Merle L. Collins, the respondent in this court. An identical situation confronts us now, if we hear this appeal upon its merits.
The children are yet in the State of Oregon. The mother, who *448here asks us to take her appeal, has refused to return them to the jurisdiction of either this court or the district court, whose writ and judgment she asked below. If we were to affirm then the judgment adverse to her from which she now appeals, we like the trial court have no means at hand to make that affirmance effective. The mother can, and probably will, flout our authority, should we hold against her, as she has made purposeless the judgment which she has appealed to us.
I agree that she cannot be adjudged guilty of contempt and punished therefor, until after citation issued she has had a hearing and there consistent with our statutes has been formally adjudged guilty. But on this record and indeed by the admissions of her counsel at the bar of this court made on the oral argument of the cause she stands charged with a contempt which she does not deny. Nor has she in any wise purged herself of the clear imputation of guilt, which follows upon thati charge. In these circumstances then this court out of a decent respect for its own dignity has in my opinion but one course open to it. This appeal should be dismissed. Our sister state of Oregon where it seems this mother and these children now are, holds herself in a like ease to such a rule. Friendly v. Friendly, 137 Ore. 180, 2 Pac. (2d) 1. In accord I find the Supreme Court of Nevada in Closset v. Closset, Nev., 280 Pac. (2d) 290; the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Henderson v. Henderson, 329 Mass. 257, 107 N.E. (2d) 773; the Supreme Court of Alabama in McEntire v. McEntire, 213 Ala. 328, 104 So. 804; the Supreme Court of California in MacPherson v. MacPherson, 13 Cal. (2d) 271, 89 Pac. (2d) 382, and in Knoob v. Knoob, 192 Cal. 95, 218 Pac. 568; the Court of Appeals of Kentucky in Casebolt v. Butler, 175 Ky. 381, 194 S.W. 305; the Supreme Court of Illinois in Lindsay v. Lindsay, 255 Ill. 442, 99 N.E. 608; the Supreme Court of Washington in Pike v. Pike, 24 Wash. (2d) 735, 167 Pac. (2d) 401, 163 A.L.R. 1314.
In Knoob v. Knoob, supra, 192 Cal. at page 96, 218 Pac. at page 569, the California court has spoken directly in point upon the ease now at our bar: “It is very clear that the appellant has *449determined to set at naught the dne process and orders of the courts of California, and does not intend to obey their mandate respecting the custody of the minor child. Under such circumstances she is not entitled to press her appeal in this court. ’ ’
Consistent with this view of the law I would decline to hear this appeal upon the merits, unless within 30 days after the entry of our warning order to that effect the mother returns these children to the jurisdiction of the district court of Sanders County, and leaves them there subject to its and our jurisdiction such that any judgment which we may enter in the cause may be enforced.