Order takes 7-plus years in child-visitation case

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It took Maryland‘s top court more than seven years and three months to decide that the Charles County Circuit Court lacked jurisdiction in a child-visitation case pitting a mother who had moved to Texas against a father who had moved to Delaware.

It was on Sept. 12, 2006, that the Court of Appeals heard Karen Ellen Mullins’ appeal of Circuit Court Judge Christopher C. Henderson’s August 2005 order holding her in contempt of court for having violated an agreement adjoining the trial court’s Dec. 20, 1999, divorce decree. The agreement required her to transport her three children from Texas to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport for a visit with their father, Gregory Lee Alexander, who by 2005 lived in Delaware.

On Monday, Dec. 30, the high court issued an order. It vacated Henderson’s contempt order, stating that “the circuit court was without jurisdiction” to hold the mother in contempt.

“Courts generally give the decree-rendering state a strong presumption of continuing modification jurisdiction until all or almost all connections with the parents and the child is lost,” the order stated. “Continuing jurisdiction is lost when the child, the child’s parents and any person acting as a parent no longer reside in the original decree state.”

Henderson’s 2005 contempt order had required the mother to pay $1,000 in attorney’s fees and pay a fine of $500 for every day the children were not delivered to the father, according to a record of the litigation on the Maryland Judiciary’s Case Search website.

Gregory Alexander’s attorney, John E. Ray, said Thursday he had “no idea” why it took the Court of Appeals so long to rule — especially because the father did not challenge Mullins’ appeal of the order.

By the time the case reached the high court, Ray said, Mullins had complied with the requirement that she send the children to Alexander for visitation during the summer.

“My client got his visitation, so it was a dead issue,” said Ray, of Mudd, Mudd & Fitzgerald P.A. in La Plata.

“I said [to Williams], ‘Don’t waste your money; it’s over,’” Ray added. “I never filed a response.”

Mullins’ attorney, Waldorf solo practitioner Patrick R. Hudson, did not return telephone messages seeking comment Thursday.

During the time between the 2006 argument and 2013 order, the three children reached adulthood and four of the seven Court of Appeals judges who heard Mullins’ appeal retired, having reached the state’s mandatory judicial retirement age of 70. The retirees — former Chief Judge Robert M. Bell and judges Irma S. Raker, Alan M. Wilner and Dale R. Cathell — participated in the order’s issuance under recall provisions of the Maryland Constitution.

The other judges who participated — Glenn T. Harrell Jr., Lynne A. Battaglia and Clayton Greene Jr. — are still on the high court.

The Court of Appeals’ order was issued per curiam, meaning that no single judge signed it on behalf of the court.

The more than seven-year wait between argument and high-court resolution is in keeping with August 2011 and September 2012 reports in The Daily Record that found many Court of Appeals cases were still pending years after they were argued.

Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera, whom Gov. Martin O’Malley appointed to the high court in 2008 and to the top spot last July, pledged in September that the Court of Appeals will issue its decisions no later than the Aug. 31 after it hears arguments.

“We’re moving forward,” said Angelita Plemmer Williams, a spokeswoman for Barbera, when asked to comment on the span between argument and order in Mullins v. Alexander, No. 125 September Term 2005.

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