Ardoin v. Grice

CONERY, Judge.

| tThis case exemplifies what can happen when an error of law early on in a case interdicts and colors the entire fact finding process in a civil custody trial. Such an error in this case allowed a putative father, a convicted felon, to obtain an invalid ex parte order of custody of a daughter he had had not seen for all of the six years of her life. That order then formed the basis of an arrest- of the minor child’s mother on two occasions for attempted simple kidnapping as she attempted to regain custody of her daughter.

At an eventual custody trial some two years later, one of…