State ex rel. Cihlar v. Crawford

• Decision Date: 20 February 2001
• Citation: 39 S.W.3d 172
• Parties: STATE of Tennessee ex rel. Thomas Matthew CIHLAR, et al. v. Ronald Shane CRAWFORD, et al.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

39 S.W.3d 172

STATE of Tennessee ex rel. Thomas Matthew CIHLAR, et al. v. Ronald Shane CRAWFORD, et al.

Court of Appeals of Tennessee, Middle Section, at Nashville.

August 22, 2000.

Permission to Appeal Denied February 20, 2001.

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Ronald Shane Crawford, Joelton, TN, pro se.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General and Reporter, and Stuart Wilson-Patton, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee, State of Tennessee.

Wayne Detring, Hendersonville, TN, for appellee, Thomas Matthew Cihlar.

Nannette Clark, Nashville, TN, Guardian Ad Litem for Sean Michael Crawford.

Permission to Appeal Denied by Supreme Court February 20, 2001.

OPINION

KOCH, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which CAIN and COTTRELL, JJ., joined.

This appeal involves Thomas Matthew Cihlar's second attempt to obtain a judicial declaration that he is the father of a child whose mother was married to another man when the child was born. His first effort ended when the Tennessee Supreme Court held that he did not have standing to legitimate the child under Tennessee's now-repealed legitimation statutes. See Evans v. Steelman, 970 S.W.2d 431 (Tenn.1998). Thereafter, the State of Tennessee, joined later by both Mr. Cihlar and his child, filed a petition in the Davidson County Juvenile Court seeking to establish Mr. Cihlar's parentage under statutes enacted after Mr. Cihlar filed his first legitimation petition. Following a bench trial, a juvenile court referee determined that Mr. Cihlar was the child's biological father, ordered Mr. Cihlar to begin making child support payments, and prescribed Mr. Cihlar's visitation privileges. The juvenile court judge later affirmed the referee's order. On this appeal, the estranged husband of the child's biological mother asserts that Mr. Cihlar's petition to establish parentage was foreclosed by Evans v. Steelman. We have determined that the current parentage statutes are constitutional and that they authorize not only Mr. Cihlar, but also the State and Mr. Cihlar's child, to file an action to establish Mr. Cihlar's paternity. Accordingly, we affirm the juvenile court.

Mary Ann Crawford and Ronald Shane Crawford were married on July 2, 1988, after she gave birth to Mr. Crawford's child. They separated in the autumn of 1990. Within a matter of weeks, Ms. Crawford, who was working as a topless dancer at the time, moved in with Thomas Matthew Cihlar whom she had met shortly after leaving Mr. Crawford. This liaison ended in April 1991 when Ms. Crawford left Mr. Cihlar and moved in with her mother. In parting, Ms. Crawford told Mr. Cihlar for the first time that she was married and also assured him that she was not pregnant. She proved to be mistaken about the latter. In August 1991, she told Mr. Cihlar that she was pregnant with his child. Ms. Crawford and Mr. Cihlar shopped for baby clothes and even agreed upon the child's name. Sean Michael Crawford was born on November 29, 1991.¹

Ms. Crawford permitted Mr. Cihlar to develop a personal relationship with his son soon after Sean's birth. She allowed regular overnight visits on most weekends and accepted Mr. Cihlar's voluntary financial contributions for Sean's support. Mr. Cihlar's liberal access to his son continued even after Ms. Crawford began seeing Mr. Crawford again in February 1992. Mr. Crawford apparently knew that he was not Sean's father and did not object to the developing relationship between Mr. Cihlar and Sean or to Mr. Cihlar's regular financial contributions for Sean's support. The record contains little information regarding the relationship between Mr. Crawford and Sean, and there is certainly no evidence that Mr. Crawford maintained any sort of relationship with Sean after he and Ms. Crawford separated for the second, and apparently final, time in September 1993.²

The relationship between Ms. Crawford and Mr. Cihlar deteriorated markedly after July 1994 when Mr. Cihlar filed a petition in the Circuit Court for Davidson County to legitimate Sean pursuant to Tenn.Code Ann. § 36-2-202 (repealed 1997). Ms. Crawford opposed the petition and ended Mr. Cihlar's visitation with his son. Mr. Crawford, even though estranged from Ms. Crawford, also opposed the petition. On October 27, 1995, following a bench trial, the circuit court entered an order declaring Mr. Cihlar to be Sean Crawford's biological father and changing the child's surname to Cihlar. The trial court also ordered Mr. Cihlar to pay child support and established a regular visitation schedule with Sean. The Crawfords appealed. On October 18, 1996, this court reversed the trial court on two grounds. First, the court held that the legitimation statutes did not give Mr. Cihlar standing to legitimate his son. Second, the court concluded that Mr. Cihlar could not proceed with his legitimation petition because Ms. Crawford had not consented to it. See In re Crawford, No. 01A01-9602-CV-00070, 1996 WL 596953, at *4 (Tenn.Ct.App. Oct. 18, 1996).³ The Tennessee Supreme Court granted permission to appeal and consolidated the case with another one raising the same issues.⁴

While these two cases were pending before the Tennessee Supreme Court, the General Assembly repealed both the paternity statutes⁵ and the legitimation statutes⁶ and replaced them with a single cause of action for establishing the parentage of a child.⁷ This Act, which became effective on July 1, 1997, did away with the presumption that a child born to a married woman was the offspring of the woman's husband. See Tenn.Code Ann. §§ 36-2-304(a)(1), -304(c). It also specifically authorized any man claiming to be a child's father to file suit to establish parentage regardless of the marital status of the child's mother. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 36-2-305(b)(1)(C). In addition, the Act contained a limitations provision requiring parentage actions that would rebut the presumption of parentage based on the marriage of the child's parents to be filed within two years of the birth of the child. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 32-2-304(b) (Supp.1997).⁸

The Tennessee Supreme Court handed down its decision in both cases on March 30, 1998. See Evans v. Steelman, 970 S.W.2d 431 (Tenn.1998). The Court found that the now-repealed Tenn.Code Ann. § 36-2-202 was constitutional and that Mr. Cihlar did not have standing to legitimate his son. See Evans v. Steelman, 970 S.W.2d at 434. Even though the Court noted that the General Assembly had replaced the legitimation and paternity statutes with the action to establish parentage, it declined to permit either Mr. Cihlar or Mr. Evans to take advantage of the new statutes because the General Assembly had specifically declined to make the new statutory provisions apply to legitimation or paternity actions filed before July 1, 1997. See Evans v. Steelman, 970 S.W.2d at 432.

On August 10, 1998, the State of Tennessee, acting pursuant to its federally mandated prerogatives under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, filed a petition in the Davidson County Juvenile Court to establish that Mr. Cihlar was Sean's biological father.⁹ A juvenile court referee appointed a guardian ad litem for Sean, and the guardian later filed a supplemental petition on behalf of Sean seeking a formal parentage determination. Mr. Cihlar also retained a lawyer to represent his interests during the juvenile court proceedings. Mr. Crawford opposed this petition.¹⁰ Following a hearing, the juvenile court referee entered an order concluding that Mr. Cihlar was the biological and legal father of Sean Michael Crawford. The order, which was affirmed by the juvenile court judge on April 7, 1999, also established Mr. Cihlar's child support obligation and his visitation and other rights. Mr. Crawford as appealed from the juvenile court judge's order.

Less than one month after Mr. Crawford filed his notice of appeal, the General Assembly again amended the statutes governing actions to establish parentage to express its "clear and unequivocal" intent for the new parentage statutes to apply retroactively to biological fathers whose legitimation actions filed prior to July 1, 1997 were dismissed either because of the biological father's lack of standing or the irrebuttable presumption of parentage arising from the marital status of the child's mother. See Act of May 24, 1999, ch. 339, Tenn.Pub.Acts 756, codified at Tenn. Code Ann. § 36-2-304(b)(2)(B). There can be little doubt that the General Assembly enacted this amendment to address the Tennessee Supreme Court's holding in Evans v. Steelman regarding the retroactive application of the 1997 statutes creating the cause of action to establish parentage.

I. STANDING TO PURSUE A PARENTAGE DETERMINATION

We turn to the standing issue first. Clearly, Tenn.Code Ann. § 36-2-305(b)(1) empowered not only Mr. Cihlar, but also Sean and the State, to file an action to establish parentage. However, Mr. Crawford asserts that the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel prevent Mr. Cihlar and anyone in privity with him from filing suit seeking this remedy because the Tennessee Supreme Court had already determined that Mr. Cihlar lacked standing to legitimate Sean. We disagree for two reasons. First, the legal relations of the parties changed in a material way after the Tennessee Supreme Court's opinion when the General Assembly specifically empowered persons like Mr. Cihlar to file actions to establish parentage. Second, even if Mr. Cihlar himself could not file an action to establish parentage, both Sean and the State of Tennessee could because they are not in privity with Mr. Cihlar, even though their interests are related.

A. RES JUDICATA AND COLLATERAL ESTOPPEL

Res judicata and collateral estoppel are related preclusion doctrines with common purposes. They promote finality in litigation in order to conserve judicial resources and to relieve litigants from the cost and vexation of multiple lawsuits. See Beaty v. McGraw, 15 S.W.3d 819, 824 (...