Medina-Puerta v. Goon
| Decision Date | 27 June 2012 |
| Docket Number | G045387 |
| Parties | ANTONIO MEDINA-PUERTA, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. MARY T. GOON, Defendant and Respondent. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.
OPINIONAppeal from an order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Paula J. Coleman, Temporary Judge. (Pursuant to Cal. Const., art. VI, § 21.) Affirmed.
Antonio Medina-Puerta, in pro. per., for Appellant.
Parsons & Pietro and Shannon M. Pietro for Respondent.
Six years after the trial court established Antonio Medina-Puerta's (Antonio) paternity and ordered Mary T. Goon. (Mary)1 to pay him $23 per month in child support, he sought an upward modification of the support order, claiming the expiration of his unemployment benefits as changed circumstances. Instead, he obtained an order that required him to pay monthly child support to Mary.
The civil discovery process and a court hearing revealed the following pertinent facts about Antonio's financial status: In the previous four years, Antonio (1) received over $700,000, tax free, as the result of a consent decree in a civil forfeiture action against the United States; (2) turned down a $95,000 a year engineering position because it conflicted with his current visitation schedule; and, (3) routinely hid money and paid normal living expenses by manipulating his children's trust accounts and opening bank accounts under various aliases. Following a modification hearing, the trial court imputed income of $95,000 per year to Antonio and order him to pay Mary $706 per month in child support.2 He appeals from this order on a number of marginally frivolous grounds. Consequently, we affirm the judgment.
Antonio's opening brief is replete with facts unsupported by record references or admissible evidence. The appellate record discloses he and Mary were married and divorced before the birth of their twin boys in November 2000. Antonio filed a paternity action in 2002. He was awarded joint legal and physical custody of the twins. In 2004, Mary was ordered to pay $23 per month child support to Antonio because she was employed and Antonio was not.
Mary has worked as a technical writer for Cisco Systems since August 2000. After the initial support order, Antonio underwent a vocational assessment to determine his earning capacity. As a college graduate with both undergraduate and advanced degrees in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the assessment appraised Antonio's earning ability at approximately $80,000 per year.
In 2008, Mary obtained court permission to relocate from Orange County to Milpitas, California. Antonio continued to reside in the family home in Fountain Valley, the ownership of which was in dispute at the time of the court's hearing. Mary and Antonio continued to share joint legal custody of their children, but Mary became the primary custodial parent.
In March 2010, the Orange County Department of Child Support Services filed a request for modification of the child support order at Antonio's behest. He alleged changed circumstances after exhausting his unemployment benefits. The county's attorney filed and served a notice to appear and produce financial documents on both parties.
On June 21, Antonio filed an income and expense declaration. He listed his last period of employment as September 1 through October 31, 2007 and his last employer as the University of Madrid in Spain. During this employment, he claimed to have worked 40 hours per week and earned $1,640 per month. In 2010, Antonio claimed receipt of $1,266 per month income from unemployment benefits, $95 in total assets, $2,480 per month in expenses, and $5,770 in credit card debt. He also claimed to spend a monthly total of $965 in travel expenses to visit the children and to provide for "other needs."
On June 24, the court ordered both parties to produce copies of their tax returns for the previous three years, copies of all bank statements, the names of all banks where deposits are made, a list of past employers, and copies of unemployment benefit statements. In July, Mary issued deposition subpoenas to obtain bank records fromPacific Premier Bank for accounts in Antonio's name and other names he had used in the past. She claimed Antonio was not complying with the court's discovery order.
In August, Antonio filed a notice of motion and motion to "quash deposition subpoena for production of business documents" and for sanctions. He claimed Mary's subpoenas violated his right to privacy and were "vague, ambiguous, oppressive, burdensome, overly broad, and not calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence . . . ." Mary opposed the motion, arguing Antonio refused to comply with the court's discovery order, claiming he "chooses not to work based upon substantial sums held by him on account" in the banks served with the subpoenas.
In October, Mary submitted a 2010 income and expense declaration showing an average gross monthly income of $8,284, plus $1,386 per month from a one-time bonus. She submitted paystubs from August, September and October of 2010 as supporting documentation and claimed $7,842 in monthly expenses, which included a mortgage payment, healthcare premiums, and child care costs. She challenged Antonio's modification request on the grounds he "is a highly educated engineer" who turned down a 2009 employment opportunity that would have resulted in $95,000 in gross income per year. She also provided documentation establishing his 2006 receipt of over $700,000 from a consent decree in a civil forfeiture action against the United States and alleged that while he refused to work in the United States, he had maintained a long-standing employment relationship with the University of Madrid that was facilitated by his frequent lengthy trips to Spain. She claimed he used as many as five aliases and the children's trust accounts to hide income and property.
On October 12, Antonio filed an income and expense declaration listing income of $554 per month from unemployment compensation and assets of $35 in cash or bank accounts. He claimed expenses of $2,430 per month, plus $9,801 in credit card debt and $11,920 in past due rent payable to Mary for a total of $21,721 in otherexpenses. On the same day, Antonio filed another motion to quash Mary's subpoenas and for sanctions.
On October 28, the parties appeared before Commissioner Richard G. Vogl. According to the court's minute orders, Antonio "orally objected" to Commissioner Vogl hearing his motion to quash, although we cannot determine from the record whether this oral motion came before or after the court issued a tentative order denying his motion. The court trailed the case from the morning calendar to the afternoon of the same day. However, sometime before 1:30 p.m., the court clerk received a telephone call from Antonio "stating he is in the hospital and cannot return to Court at 1:30 p.m." The court filed a written order denying Antonio's motion to quash that day, but also trailed the case to November 1 with an order for Antonio to present a doctor's note to prove his hospitalization.
On November 1, Commissioner Paula Coleman presided over the case. Antonio submitted a doctor's note as ordered. The court heard argument on Antonio's motion to quash and denied it. Commissioner Coleman explicitly stated, "petitioner's Motion to Quash was denied "pursuant to Commissioner Vogl's order," and "the only matter now pending is the Motion Re Modification." She scheduled the modification hearing for January 19, 2011.
Antonio filed something he called a motion to "SET ASIDE VOID ORDERS" three days later. However, this motion was taken off calendar after James L. Waltz later affirmed the denial of Antonio's motion to quash the subpoena. On January 14, 2011, Antonio filed a second income and expense declaration. Now he claimed income of only $150 per month in unemployment compensation and $27 in assets.
Antonio raised no objection to Commissioner Coleman presiding over the January 19, 2011 modification hearing. Mary testified in harmony with her income and expense declaration and the documents she filed in support of her declaration. Referring to her pay stubs, she established a total of $91,310 in earned wages for the year 2010.She has a mortgage and pays taxes associated with her Milpitas home, health care to cover herself and the children, and their day care expenses. She also claimed additional child care costs related to the twins' respective learning disabilities and the payment of all other routine living expenses. She denied having ever received money from Antonio to offset these costs.
During Antonio's testimony, he acknowledged earning a bachelor's, master's and doctorate in "engineering mostly," but claimed he had not been able to find gainful employment since 2007. He denied any physical disability and claimed to look for a job every day using several online search engines and by responding to advertisements and contacting headhunters. Although he limited his initial job search to his chosen field, he claimed that more recently he had been "looking for anything that could pay anything." At the same time, he acknowledged making no effort to remain current in his field and taking month-long visits with his children to Spain at his family's expense. He also admitted to using several names, including one for his passport and at least two others on various bank accounts. Although Antonio listed the University of Madrid as his last employer, he testified the source of his unemployment benefits was a brief stint with a...
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