Nevada family-law case summaries

Steven A. Fisher asked the Nevada Court of Appeals to step in and overturn two decisions from a district court in Lander County: a divorce decree and an order refusing to move his case to a different court location (a "change of venue"). He did this by filing what is called a petition for a writ of mandamus - a request asking a higher court to order a lower court to do something the law requires, or to correct a decision that was made in an arbitrary or unreasonable way. The Court of Appeals explained that this kind of extraordinary court order is not something a person is automatically entitled to. The court has full discretion over whether to even consider such a petition, and the person who files it carries the burden of showing that this special relief is justified. The court concluded that Fisher had not made that showing. A central reason was that a writ petition is not a stand-in for a normal appeal. Because the divorce decree and the order denying the change of venue can ordinarily be challenged through a regular appeal, and because Fisher did not show that an appeal would fail to adequately address his complaints, the court declined to use its extraordinary writ power. As a result, the court denied the petition.