Court Opinion

ID: 9849535
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:42:12.515366+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:17.461810
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
Dissenting:
The generalizations of the third paragraph of the main opinion are not objectionable but they do not have application to the facts and record of this case, in my opinion. They are platitudes that unrealistically are not supportive of the preponderance of the evidence, and in rendering lip service thereto, it seems to me, is a myopic appraisal of the findings of fact of not only one, but two district court judges, and they do not take into account what the main opinion claims we should do, — give due “allowance for the advantaged position of the trial judge.” Using such gratuities does not change the adduced facts, and it is submitted that the main opinion does not even pay a fair degree of homage to the many cases we have decided heretofore leading to our case of Stanley v. Stanley, 97 Utah 520, 94 P.2d 465 (1939), and cited therein, and the many following that deci*242sion, as reflected by a casual perusal of the Shepard’s Citations. The author there stated that “The scope of the review on appeal in equity cases is clearly settled in this jurisdiction,” in Olivero v. Eleganti, 61 Utah 475, 214 P. 313 (1923), which said “This court is authorized by the state Constitution to review the findings of the trial courts in equity cases, but the findings of the trial courts on conflicting evidence1 will not be set aside unless it manifestly appears that the court has misapplied proven facts2 or made findings clearly against the weight of the evidence.” 3 The record in this case simply does not warrant a reversal under such a rule.4 There is an abundance of believable, competent and substantial evidence here requiring affirmance under the rule.
Before pointing out some aspects of this case calling for affirmance of the trial court under established principles of appellate review, it is noted that the main opinion leans heavily, — to the extent of over half thereof, — on a series of testimonial psychosynthetic gratuities about the mother figure, — a technique frequently unhelpful to the trial court and frequently as contro-version-ridden as the splenic ephithets tossed at each other by the erstwhile soul mates in the subject litigation. It is re-mindful of the psychiatric testimony in Lemmon v. Denver & R. G. W. R. Co., 9 Utah 2d 195, 341 P.2d 215 (1959), that explained one’s deliberate leaving his wallet and only means of identification on the seat of his car as evidencing a premonition that he was going to have amnesia, when he disappeared from Utah into the wilds of Colorado.
Here are only a few of the facts reflected in the record that lead me to conclude that it would be error for this court to reverse the judgment of the trial court:
The main opinion, in its first paragraph, after conceding that the appellant stipulated in the divorce action that the respondent should have the custody of the two boys, that this court now takes away from him in the face of the trial court’s studied decision otherwise, said that the trial judge in the divorce proceeding, the Hon. John F. Wahlquist, “wisely provided in the decree that the court would ‘reserve jurisdiction regarding custody of the minor children, subject to further hearing in the event either party make a showing that the present custody arrangements are not in *243the best interest of said children.’ ” This was dated March 10, 1967. Less than a year later, on January 28, 1968, the appellant, by petition, asked that because of changed circumstances she be awarded the custody of the younger of the two boys in addition to the minor girl who previously had been awarded to her. This same "wise” judge accommodated her by issuing an order to show cause why she should not be awarded the relief prayed for and the decree modified accordingly. After respondent filed a counter pleading, a hearing was had and on April 22, 1968, the same wise judge found that:
“The natural mother is more capable than the average person, is further more easily upset than the average person and has less emotional strength than the average” and “that the plaintiff has less than average interest in her own children, as demonstrated by her reaction to visitation and pickup” and “that the plaintiff is not absent these qualities but less than average in them and markedly so” and that “The Court finds the plaintiff is warm, but that her affections for her children are not real and her description is basically one that she wants the children because the children are qualities rather than because the children are children.” Plaintiff’s petition was denied.
Plaintiff appealed the wise judge’s decision to this court on May 16, 1968, Case No. 11269, and after this court sent her counsel a letter stating she was in default in filing her brief, she stipulated with the other side that the appeal could be dismissed, and we accommodated her by dismissing it on August 8, 1968. This was about three months after her appeal. Previously she had remarried one Thomas D. Harrison in New York on July 20, 1968, giving her home not only a mother figure, but a father figure, which latter figure the respondent herein, rather fiendishly but constantly insisted on calling “Tweetie Pie,” — even on Christmas.
Undaunted by her previous reversals she either voluntarily or by encouragement of her new protector, filed another petition on October 28, 1968, this time on the same grounds, — change in circumstances, — with some gratuitous and rather uncomplimentary aspersions about her ex-husband’s usefulness while still breathing. This time, however, she shot the works and asked for full custody of both the boys, because, she suggested, of a newborn warm family association not existing theretofore. One cannot deny that she may have attributed this millenium to the happy New York union three months before to him whose significance was not shared by a previous him who did not hesitate to christen his tormentor with an unusual appellation.
Judge Wahlquist again accommodated appellant by signing an order to show cause why her petition should not be grant*244ed, dated October 26, 1968, setting the hearing thereon for November 12, 1968. After obtaining the signature of Judge Wahlquist on the order to show cause, and only five days thereafter, the plaintiff signed and filed an affidavit stating that she believed the judge was biased and prejudiced, for the purpose of getting another judge to hear the case. The wise judge wisely manoeuvred the case out of his court, and the hearing to change custody emerged out of a deluge of other motions, requests for admissions and interrogatories initiated by appellant, finally winding up in the courtroom of Judge Wahlquist’s colleague, the Hon. Parley E. Norseth. After several hearings, continuances and about 400 pages later, on August 4, 1969, Judge Norseth found that Mr. Harrison, appellant’s new husband, in June 1968, before he had married appellant, went to defendant’s home and advised him he was handling appellant’s visitation rights, and took the boys to California, where appellant was living; that prior to his marriage to appellant, he harassed defendant while the latter was on temporary military duty with purported emergency calls and telegrams, requiring defendant to be called from field duty, the calls having to do with custody of the boys, and took them to a psychiatrist without defendant’s consent; that the elder boy, out of the presence of the parties said he wanted to stay with his natural father; that appellant and Harrison sought to get the boys to request a change in their custody by promise of gifts; that such constant attempts were not in the best interest of the boys; that plaintiff by constant long-distance telephone calls to the boys placed them under great emotional pressure; that defendant has properly supervised the boys and that the boys should remain in the custody of defendant subject to reasonable visitation rights, and that plaintiff should have them in August of each year; that Harrison be restrained from harassing defendant with calls and telegrams and from interfering with the order of the court; and that plaintiff should also have the boys during the Christmas holidays.
Time and space prevent detailing this voluminous record further. Nevertheless it is replete with motion after motion after motion filed by appellant, all costly to meet, punctuated with execution against defendant’s salary, interrogatories, etc., almost ad infinitum, none of which resulted in impressing two district judges, whose judgments this court now destroys after two years’ litigation. Appellant after her motion to obtain the younger boy was denied, returned to California without even seeing him, failed to write her children or show any interest until June 1968, 15 months after the divorce. Thereafter she swamped the boys and defendant with calls and telegrams, recorded a long-distance conversation with defendant on Christmas, *245that from the record, in my opinion obviously was suggested and accomplished on advice of somebody or other, and sent her hoy friend, who later became her husband to pick up and deliver the boys he had never seen, who explained his agency on the grounds plaintiff was emotionally unable to do so. Harrison dealt with the lawyers and psychologists without defendant’s consent, in an attempt to effect a change in custody. In a secret code, such puerile phrases as “Casual Cat” were used by the Harrisons in letters to the boys apparently for purposes of deception. These are only a few parts of the controversial record, steeped in hate and heated by the unwilling bodies and souls of two little boys.
There is no question in my mind that both of the trial judges’ identical conclusions with respect to the custody of these boys should not be junked now because this court, in interpreting a rule of appellate review in equity cases, takes upon itself to say that manifestly it appears that two arbiters of the facts, in concluding as they did, on conflicting evidence, misapplied proven facts or made findings clearly against the weight of the evidence. To do so, in my opinion, is a “manifest” reflection upon the integrity and intelligence of two of our learned jurists and no kudo for our own superiority in deciding domestic difficulties that largely should be disposed of on the real firing line, — the trial court level.
The trial court should be affirmed.
CALLISTER, J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of HENRIOD, J.

. Most certainly the case liere.

. Most certainly not the case hero.

. Also, most certainly not the case here.

. In a concurring opinion in the Stanley case, Justice Wolfe elaborated on the rule by saying: “I opine that what was really meant [in the many previous cases cited] was that on review we would go over the record to determine what our conclusions of fact were from the transcript of the evidence, and if at the end of that investigation we were in doubt or even if there might be a slight preponderance in our minds against the trial court’s conclusions, we would affirm.”