Nevada family-law case summaries

This case involves the termination of a father's parental rights to his two surviving children. Between 2006 and 2011, the family experienced seven separate incidents in which one of the three children swallowed foreign objects such as coins, magnets, and batteries. All occurred while the father, Arli, was at work and the mother, Abigail, was home with the children. One son, J.M., died in 2006 from undetermined causes. After three-year-old E.M.M. required surgery to remove a large battery lodged in his throat, doctors became concerned that Abigail was forcing the children to swallow objects and contacted child protective services. The doctors compared the size of the battery, for a child E.M.M.'s age, to an adult swallowing a golf ball. In November 2011, DFS removed A.P.M. and E.M.M. from the home and placed them in foster care. The juvenile court gave each parent a "case plan" - a written list of things they had to do (such as parenting classes and counseling) to try to get their children back. Arli completed his case plan quickly. Even so, in December 2012, DFS asked the court to terminate both parents' rights permanently. After a five-day hearing, the district court ordered termination, finding that Arli had been neglectful by not taking action to protect his children after the repeated swallowing incidents - including continuing to leave them alone with Abigail - and that termination was in the children's best interests. Abigail died while the appeal was pending, leaving only Arli's appeal. The Nevada Supreme Court addressed two new legal questions. First, it held that finishing a court-ordered case plan does not, by itself, prevent a court from terminating parental rights. A completed case plan can be persuasive evidence in the parent's favor, but Nevada law does not make it a shield against termination if the other legal grounds are satisfied. Second, it interpreted a Nevada statute that creates two legal presumptions when a child has lived outside the home "for 14 months of any 20 consecutive months": (1) the parent is presumed to have made only token efforts, and (2) termination is presumed to be in the child's best interest. Arli argued the district court had to wait the full 20 months before applying these presumptions. The Supreme Court disagreed - once the 14-month threshold is hit, the presumptions can apply right away. Here the children had been out of the home about 17 months, which was enough. Finally, the court held that "substantial evidence" - meaning enough credible evidence that a reasonable factfinder could agree - supported termination. The court pointed to Arli's failure to take protective action after seven serious swallowing incidents, his limited relationship with the children, and the foster parent's testimony that she had a close relationship with the children and wished to adopt them. The court noted that even with Abigail's death, Arli remained "unable to protect his children from danger, swallowing or otherwise." Two justices dissented in whole or in part. Justice Douglas, joined by Justice Cherry, would have remanded for a new best-interests hearing because Abigail - the apparent source of the danger - had died and Arli had completed his case plan. Justice Saitta agreed with most of the majority opinion but wrote separately to dissent on the parental-fault finding, viewing Arli's mistaken belief about Abigail and his completed case plan as not enough to amount to neglect.

This case is about a mother, Keaundra D., who lost her parental rights to her two children after her one-year-old son, C.B., was burned in the face by an iron. Keaundra told investigators she was the only adult home at the time; according to her trial testimony, she was in an attached bathroom getting ready for work when she heard the iron fall, and her older child told her that C.B. had tried to kiss the iron. After an anonymous call to a child abuse hotline, DFS investigated. Keaundra moved her family to Louisiana, which DFS characterized as a flight in an attempt to hide the children. The children were removed from her care, and DFS filed a petition for protective custody, alleging that Keaundra had either physically abused or negligently supervised C.B. At a hearing, a medical examiner, Dr. Mehta, testified that the shape of the burn was inconsistent with an accident and that the iron was deliberately held to C.B.'s face. Keaundra tried to counter that testimony with a report from Dr. Neuman, the physician who had personally examined C.B. in Louisiana. The hearing master - a court officer who conducts hearings and makes recommendations to a judge - refused to admit the report because it was not a certified copy, found that Keaundra physically abused C.B., and the juvenile court affirmed, concluding the injury was not accidental. Keaundra was then given a "case plan" - a set of requirements a parent must satisfy to be reunited with her children. She completed nearly all of it: parenting classes, stable housing and jobs, an assessment, and therapy. Her therapist testified that her behavior and demeanor had markedly changed and that her risk to reoffend was low. But DFS continued to recommend terminating her parental rights for one reason: she would not admit that she had deliberately held the iron to her son's face. DFS stated at trial that, with such an admission, it would not have sought termination. The district court ultimately terminated her rights, relying on the earlier finding that the injury was not accidental. On appeal, the Nevada Supreme Court did not decide whether Keaundra abused her child. Instead, it focused on a procedural point: Keaundra argued that Dr. Neuman's report was improperly excluded, and DFS never responded to that argument. Under Nevada's appellate rules, failing to respond to an argument can be treated as a "confession of error" - effectively conceding the point. The court concluded that DFS confessed error. Because every finding of parental fault in the case traced back to the abuse finding - which in turn rested on the improperly excluded rebuttal evidence - the court reversed the termination order and sent the case back for a new trial on Keaundra's parental rights. The court noted, but did not decide, Keaundra's separate argument that conditioning her parental rights on an admission of intentional harm violated her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The order terminating the father Christopher B.'s parental rights was not before the court because he did not appeal.

This case consolidated five juvenile court appeals. In each, a juvenile who had been found delinquent was ordered to pay restitution (money to compensate the victims of the juvenile's wrongdoing). The juveniles argued that the juvenile court did not have the power to order them to pay restitution directly to victims, contending that restitution was only allowed as part of a formal "program." The Nevada Supreme Court rejected that argument and affirmed all five orders. The court pointed to the statute allowing juvenile courts to require a child to participate in a restitution program and explained that this permissive language does not forbid ordering restitution outside a formal program. The court emphasized that compensating crime victims is an important public policy, that there is no reason to treat juvenile wrongdoing differently from adult wrongdoing in this respect, and that the juvenile court has inherent power to order reasonable consequences for delinquent minors. The court noted there are limits - restitution cannot be unreasonable or excessive, and a juvenile cannot be threatened with incarceration over it - but those problems were not present in these appeals.

Two minors were charged with delinquent acts in juvenile court. Psychiatric evaluations showed neither was competent to help his lawyer defend the charges, and both were found to be dangerous and in need of secure residential treatment. Because Nevada had no available facility, the juvenile court ordered the state's Division of Mental Hygiene and Mental Retardation to place the minors in an out-of-state facility in California, and later ordered the Division to pay for their care. When the Division did not pay, the court threatened its administrator, Dr. Dickson, with contempt. The Division asked the Supreme Court to block the contempt hearing and to overturn the orders. The Nevada Supreme Court reached several conclusions. First, a writ of prohibition was the proper remedy because the Division faced a possible contempt order with no other adequate remedy. Second, like adults, juveniles accused in delinquency proceedings are entitled to due process, including the right to effective counsel; a child who is not competent to assist counsel cannot be tried until competency is regained. Third, the juvenile court did have authority under the Juvenile Court Act to order the minors placed in an out-of-state treatment facility. Fourth, however, the court could not order the Division to pay the costs, because no money had been appropriated for that purpose; instead, the cost of care is a charge upon the county. The court therefore affirmed the placement, reversed the order making the Division pay, and granted the writ barring the contempt hearing.

A little boy, not yet two years old, sued his own mother through a guardian ad litem (an adult appointed to represent a child in court). The lawsuit claimed the mother's negligent, grossly negligent, and wilful driving of a car in October 1952 had killed the boy's father, and it sought damages for the loss of the father's support and companionship. The complaint said the boy and his mother were the father's only surviving heirs. The mother asked the court to dismiss the case, and the trial court granted her summary judgment. The child appealed. The single question was whether Nevada's wrongful death statute gave an unemancipated minor the right to sue his own mother for the wrongful death of his father. The child's lawyers accepted the long-standing common-law rule that a minor child normally cannot sue a parent in tort, and they did not argue that the wrongful death statute quietly repealed that rule. Instead, they argued that the statute's broad, unrestricted language directly repealed the parent-child immunity. The Nevada Supreme Court disagreed. The wrongful death statute created a new cause of action for a person's death, but nowhere did it directly repeal the common-law immunity that shields a parent from a tort suit by a minor child. The court noted that the one case directly on point, a Pennsylvania decision, was so divided that four of its seven justices actually rejected the theory. The court held that any departure from the immunity rule must come from the legislature, and it affirmed the dismissal.