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Murphy v. Murphy

The trial court erred in holding the appellant's attorneys in contempt for her failure to appear at a contempt hearing, as she was not required to appear in person.

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Although this is our third opinion in this custody modification action, we are still not presented with a final order on the petition to modify. Instead we are presented with a series of rulings holding appellant Nancy Michelle Murphy and her attorneys, Millard Farmer and Larry King, in contempt of court.

Farmer has been held in contempt of an earlier order that prohibited the parties from discussing the case with their children. As Farmer signed a brief to which he exhibited affidavits of the children echoing their mother’s anger at John Murphy, there is sufficient evidence to support that ruling; and we find that Farmer received sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard before he was held in contempt. Nancy Michelle Murphy has been held in contempt of another provision of that order which required her to cooperate with a custody evaluator. Any insufficiency of the evidence presented on that charge at the contempt hearing was supplied by her own brief in opposition to the motion for contempt. In that brief she announced that she deemed herself to be entitled to defy the provision directing her to cooperate with the evaluator. And again we find sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard. Finally Farmer and King have been held in contempt for failure to have Nancy Michelle Murphy present at the contempt hearing. But as she was not under subpoena and had not been ordered to appear in person, she was entitled to appear through counsel; so that ruling must be reversed.

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