Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Vermont judge says woman in contempt for litigating same-sex custody case in Virginia

The AP reports here that the Vermont court that made some kind of temporary custody ruling before the litigation in Virginia has held the woman who brought the case in Virginia in contempt for defying the Vermont order.

I'm not sure what the Vermont order says, probably it is out there on the internet somewhere.

Way back when, as a law clerk for Judge Williams, I had to study the line between civil and criminal contempt, and the last piece of work was to start on an opinion that was finished (OK, maybe it was mostly his) by Brad Young in which the judge made his final decision on whether after the strike settled, the union should still have to pay the fines he had imposed for violating his injunction. He thought they did, and they paid, as I recall. See Clark v. UMWA, 752 F. Supp. 1291 (W.D. Va. 1990).

The state court fines, on the other hand, went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, where they were struck down, in UMWA v. Bagwell. I believe Judge Williams thinks his ruling on the fines would have passed muster even under the Supreme Court's analysis (or so his law clerks had him thinking).

No comments: