Court Opinion

ID: 9495406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:02:11.444253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:00.333563
License: Public Domain

Opinion by Judge PAEZ; Dissent by Judge THOMPSON.
DAVID R. THOMPSON, Circuit Judge,
Dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I do not agree with the majority’s view that Jeremiah has not waived his Hague Convention remedy. Jeremiah initiated and litigated the child custody dispute in state court in California. After pressing that court to resolve the merits of the custody dispute, Jeremiah cannot now argue that the court should have refrained from doing so, simply because he disagrees with its decision.
A case involving analytically similar circumstances was before the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico in Journe v. Journe, 911 F.Supp. 43 (D.P.R.1995). There, Dr. Journe filed for divorce and custody in France. His wife, Ms. Soto, thereafter left France with the children. Ms. Soto later appeared at a hearing in the French court that was handling the divorce and custody proceedings. Shortly after the hearing, Dr. Journe requested dismissal of the divorce petition, believing that he and Ms. Soto had reconciled. The French court granted Dr. Journe’s request and dismissed the divorce complaint. Ms. Soto, however, did not return to France and claimed that no reconciliation had occurred. Dr. Journe sought to exercise his rights under the Convention in the federal district court in Puerto Rico and have the children returned to France. The district court held that Dr. Journe’s voluntary dismissal of the divorce complaint constituted a waiver of his remedy under the Hague Convention. Dr. Journe had “his choice of a French forum to decide the custody issues under French law, as contemplated by the Convention. Given these circumstances, his voluntary dismissal of the action for divorce can only be characterized as indicative of an intent to relinquish his rights to have the custody issues decided by the courts of France.” Id. at 48.
The same equitable principle applies in this case. Like Dr. Journe, Jeremiah gave up the very thing that relief under the Hague Convention would give him: resolution of the custody issue by a court in Germany. He did that by eschewing the Hague Convention and litigating his custody suit in state court. The majority argues that a left-behind parent should be able to “simultaneously” file a custody suit and a Hague Convention petition to ensure that the abducting parent cannot choose the forum in which to litigate custody. Maybe so. But that is not this case. Jeremiah did not “simultaneously” file both claims and ask the state court to stay the custody determination pending resolution of the Hague petition. Instead, he filed only the California custody suit, insisted that the California court decide the custody issue on the merits, objected to Carla’s reference to the Hague Convention, and sought relief under that Convention only after the California state court issued its adverse custody determination.1 Consequently, he has waived the Hague Convention claim he now asserts.
*875This result is supported by the policy underlying the Hague Convention. The purpose of the Convention is to ensure that the abducting parent is not advantaged in the custody dispute. See Elisa Perez-Vera, Explanatory Report 16, in 3 Hague Conference on Private International Law, Acts and Documents of the Fourteenth Session, Child Abduction 429 (1982).2 The majority opinion, however, goes way beyond this. It gives the left-behind parent a windfall by providing him with two opportunities to litigate custody: once in state court, and if he is unhappy with the result, all over again in another forum under the Hague Convention. As the United States aptly has observed in its amicus brief filed in the state court of appeal, “[t]he Hague Convention was not intended to allow the ‘left-behind parent’ a second bite at the custody apple just because, after specifically electing to litigate custody in a forum that otherwise had jurisdiction, the parent suffered an adverse result.”
This makes sense to me. I see no reason to give Jeremiah a second bite at the custody apple. He’s had his day in court in the forum he chose. I would direct the district court to dismiss his Hague Convention petition, and I would not reach the other issues addressed by the majority.

. The first reference to the Hague Convention in the California state court proceedings occurred when, after having lost the custody dispute, Jeremiah filed a motion for reconsideration on August 18, 2000. On August 29, 2000 he filed with the United States Central Authority an application for return of the children under the Hague Convention. He did not file the district court petition in this case until November 14, 2000. During the October 2, 2002 state court hearing on his motion for reconsideration, his counsel stated that he *875was not raising the issue of the Hague Convention and objected to Carla’s references to it. His counsel told the court:
Finally, as regards [to Carla’s] addressing of Hague issues or alleged Hague Convention issues in her reply points and authorities, there is a Hague action that we filed in federal court [the United States Central Authority filing] with another attorney, but in this action, the action at bar, [Jeremiah] has not raised this issue, and so I would object to [sic] relevancy to any law or facts that were recited by Counsel as regards to Hague Convention issues, and I'd like to make that objection ongoing.
Holder v. Holder (In re Marriage of Holder), 2002 WL 443397, at *4-5 (Cal.Ct.App. Mar.20, 2002).

. Elisa Perez-Vera was the official Convention reporter, and her report is recognized by the Conference as the official history and commentary on the Convention. See Gaudin v. Remis, 282 F.3d 1178, 1182 n. 2 (9th Cir.2002).