Root v. Samuel
| Docket Number | 2021-148 |
| Decision Date | 19 November 2021 |
| Parties | Kristina Root v. Cruze Samuel* |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
In the case title, an asterisk (*) indicates an appellant and a double asterisk (**) indicates a cross-appellant. Decisions of a three-justice panel are not to be considered as precedent before any tribunal.
APPEALED FROM: Superior Court, Franklin Unit, Family Division CASE NO. 21-FA-01429 Trial Judge: Scot L. Kline
ENTRY ORDER
In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:
Defendant appeals the final relief-from-abuse order issued by the family division. We affirm.
Plaintiff and defendant were previously in a relationship and have a four-year-old daughter together. According to court records plaintiff has sole legal and physical parental rights and responsibilities for daughter.[*] At the time this proceeding began, defendant apparently exercised some unsupervised parent-child contact, although the precise arrangement is not clear from the record.
In March 2021, plaintiff filed a complaint for relief from abuse against defendant in the family division. The court denied the complaint without a hearing. Around the same time plaintiff filed a motion to modify parent-child contact in the parties' parentage proceeding. After a hearing on May 20, 2021, the court denied the latter motion. Plaintiff did not appeal these rulings.
In June 2021, plaintiff filed another complaint for relief from abuse alleging that defendant had recently abused her and daughter. At the evidentiary hearing, plaintiff testified that during a custody exchange on May 28, 2021, the parties' daughter began crying. Defendant pulled daughter's arm and said he would punish her if she didn't stop crying. Defendant then threatened plaintiff's husband and stated he was going to call the police to report a child kidnapping. Defendant threatened to blow plaintiff's head off and told plaintiff's children that they would be motherless. He said to her, "we're going to try to get you out of the picture, and then your husband next." He did not physically harm plaintiff during this incident, but she testified that he was angry and was acting unusual, as if he were on medication. The incident ended once the police arrived. Plaintiff testified that during the incident, she feared that defendant would physically harm her. She was so frightened that she decided to leave the state. Defendant called and texted her incessantly afterward, and she eventually decided to seek an emergency relief-from-abuse order.
Plaintiff testified that when she was pregnant in 2017, defendant had tried to throw boiling water on her. When police came to the house, defendant got into a fight with an officer. Plaintiff subsequently obtained a one-year restraining order against defendant. On another occasion, around the time that defendant began having visitation with daughter, defendant had pushed plaintiff and tried to grab daughter out of her arms. Plaintiff described defendant as unpredictable, acting normal one minute and then getting suddenly angry the next. She did not know if he had any guns.
Plaintiff's husband testified that during the May 2021 incident, defendant threatened to punish daughter and yanked her arm. Husband got out of the car and confronted defendant. He recalled that defendant threatened to end plaintiff's life. He could not recall defendant's exact words, but he recalled that it sounded like defendant planned to shoot plaintiff.
Defendant then testified on his own behalf. He denied that he had tried to throw boiling water on plaintiff in 2017. He also denied that he threatened to shoot plaintiff, blow her head off, or make her children motherless. He stated that it was very difficult to have any conversations with plaintiff due to her husband.
The court found that during the May 2021 custody exchange, defendant became upset and yanked the daughter's arm. The court found plaintiff and her husband to be credible in their testimony that defendant had threatened to shoot plaintiff. The court found that the parties had a tumultuous relationship, and that in this context, defendant's threat could cause a reasonable person to fear serious imminent bodily injury. The court issued a one-year relief-from-abuse order finding that defendant had placed plaintiff in fear of imminent serious physical harm and there was a danger of further abuse. The order prohibited defendant from contacting plaintiff or their child, except that defendant could have supervised visitation with the child at All About Kids in St. Albans. Defendant appealed.
"In matters of personal relations, such as abuse prevention, the family court is in a unique position to assess the credibility of witnesses and weigh the strength of evidence at hearing." Raynes v. Rogers, 2008 VT 52, ¶ 9, 183 Vt. 513. Accordingly, we will affirm a family court's decision to grant a relief-from-abuse order unless the court abused its discretion, "upholding its findings if supported by the evidence and its conclusions if supported by the findings." Id.
Defendant argues on appeal that plaintiff's testimony at the hearing was inconsistent with her affidavit, included inadmissible hearsay, and does not support the court's findings that defendant abused her and that there was a danger of further abuse. Defendant asserts that plaintiff was dissatisfied with the court's rulings denying her previous requests for a protective order and to modify parent-child contact, and therefore manufactured her claims of abuse and committed perjury to obtain her desired result.
The abuse-prevention statute provides that "[t]he court shall make such orders as it deems necessary to protect the plaintiff or the children, or both, if the court finds that the defendant has abused the plaintiff, and . . . there is a danger of further abuse." 15 V.S.A. § 1103(c)(1). The statute defines "abuse" as the occurrence of one or more of a list of specific acts, including "[p]lacing another in fear of imminent serious physical harm." Id. § 1101(1). Here, the family court found that defendant had abused plaintiff by threatening to shoot her and that in the context of their relationship, it was reasonable for her to fear imminent serious physical harm. The court further found that given the parties' toxic relationship and past history of physical altercations, there was a danger of further abuse. These findings are supported by the nonhearsay testimony of plaintiff and her husband and are not clearly erroneous.
Defendant argues that he denied threatening plaintiff, that there was no evidence that he physically harmed her, and that she didn't know if he had actually had a gun. He further argues that her...
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