Keating, O’Gara, Nedved & Peter attorney Joel Bacon, along with co-counsel Richard Ducote of Pennsylvania, won an important battle today not only for their clients, but also in the fight against those who use parental rights as a means to commit abuse.
Bacon and Ducote’s clients are a young girl and her mother who live in Lincoln, Nebraska. The lawsuit they have filed alleges the defendant, the girl’s father and a resident of Canada, used his court-ordered visitation rights as an opportunity to take the girl to Canada where he is alleged to have committed repeated acts of sexual and physical abuse. The suit sought damages for the emotional and physical harm the girl has suffered. The lower court ruled the defendant did not have a significant enough connection with Nebraska to permit a Nebraska court to hear the case.
In today’s opinion reversing the lower court’s decision, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled “one who removes a minor child from her Nebraska home under the guise of exercising a visitation right in another jurisdiction, and then intentionally subjects the child to harm before returning her to this state, could reasonably expect to be haled into a Nebraska court to answer for such conduct in a civil action brought on behalf of the child.”
The decision, which appears to be one of first impression in the nation, means a parent who may be engaging in abuse can be forced to stand trial in the child’s home state in a civil action for damages, rather than that of the abusing parent.
From the Omaha World Herald:
Court allows suit against Canadian man accused of child abuse
BY MARTHA STODDARD
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERLINCOLN – A Canadian man may be sued in Nebraska for allegedly abusing his daughter, a Lincoln resident, during visitation, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled today.
The decision is the latest action in a long-running custody dispute between a Lincoln mother and the British Columbia man over their 9-year-old daughter.
In the current case, the Supreme Court said Nebraska courts do have jurisdiction, even though the father’s only connection to the state has been traveling here to pick up his daughter for visits.
Exercising visitation rights ordinarily would not be enough to give Nebraska jurisdiction, the court ruled. However, the court said the alleged misuse of visitation rights to abuse a child changes the equation and gives Nebraska jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to Lancaster County District Court for proceedings on the allegations.