After Charles Douglas Mitchell awoke in bed one morning to his girlfriend — who suffered from bipolar disorder — stabbing him in the neck, he quickly won an order from a family law court that prevented her from having access to the child. But he needed Chad Baruch's appellate skills to make that tragic ruling enforceable.

The background to the dramatic case is as follows, according to the Dallas' Fifth Court of Appeals recent decision captioned In Re Mitchell.

Mitchell lived together with his girlfriend, Lauren Patrice Hixson, after their child's birth. Hixson apparently stopped taking medication to control her mental health condition during her pregnancy. On Nov. 18, 2016, Mitchell was sleeping in the bedroom with the child in the crib when he awoke at 3:30 a.m. to find Hixson standing over him with a butcher knife stabbing him in the neck.