One lonely opinion issued this Friday the 13th.
It's about juvenile law, and specifically termination of parental rights (TPR). Mom appeals from such a TPR order. She argues that the trial court screwed up in: (1) excluding certain evidence; (2) denying a motion to reopen the evidence; and (3) concluding that DCF did not perpetrate a fraud on the court. SCOV affirms.
This is a relatively lengthy opinion given that there's no dissent. Let's go over the essentials.
DCF took G.L. into custody when G.L. was about five months old. Why? G.L.'s older half brother showed up to school with a facial injury and said mom had hit him. G.L. was placed with a presumably married couple (I'm guessing based on the same initial for the last name) and has been there since. Roughly a year and a half after G.L. went into DCF custody, the state filed a motion to terminate mom's parental rights. There was a hearing. Several months later, the trial court found that mom had stagnated in her progress and terminated mom's parental rights.
Concerns about the foster placement arose following termination of parental rights. Turns out one of the foster parents had some undisclosed substance abuse issues and that led to a change in thinking about whether G.L. would be adopted. Not only that, there were concerns back in 2011 too. Inadvertently, even though mom had been removed as a party after her rights were terminated, some paperwork delineating these concerns made it to mom's attorney, which prompted a motion for relief from the termination order. Mom argued that there was fraud on the court and that DCF's practice of storing residential-licensing records outside of case records was hiding the ball.
The trial court concluded that separating the records made business sense and wasn't done to thwart parties' investigations. The fact that mom's lawyer didn't know about this practice didn't mean he couldn't figure it out. The court also found it unlikely that the DCF worker knew about the 2011 concerns when testifying at the TPR hearing. Long story short, the trial court found that mom had failed to carry the burden of proof on her fraud-on-the-court claims and denied the motion for relief from judgment. Mom appeals.
SCOV first takes up the exclusion-of-evidence piece. This is one of those things where the standard is abuse of discretion and that's really all you need to know to determine the outcome. Now, don't get me wrong. There's some interesting stuff about subsection (b) of this statute and why it doesn't apply here but the bottom line is that SCOV finds no abuse of discretion.
Next, we take a look at mom's motion to reopen the evidence. And once again, the standard of review—"broad discretion"—gives us a pretty big clue as to the result. SCOV considers the circumstances, concluding that mom's disagreement with the trial court's reasoning does not an abuse of discretion make.
This brings us to mom's primary argument: that the trial court screwed up when it concluded that DCF didn't perpetrate a fraud on the court. SCOV—are we seeing a pattern here?—disagrees. SCOV reviews whether the trial court applied the correct standard without deference here, but it doesn't make a difference in the outcome. SCOV concludes that mom failed to carry her burden. Here's the big takeaway from this one. SCOV explains: "We conclude that in Vermont, a claim of fraud on the court demands a corresponding showing of intent to deceive by an individual actor or group of actors, regardless of the identity of the parties or the character of the legal issues involved." Because mom's claims turned more on DCF's lack of systems and what DCF should have known—essentially arguing for a recklessness standard—SCOV concludes that mom's claims do not meet the standard for fraud on the court.
And so, noting that mom does not challenge the trial court's factual findings, which support the trial court's no-intentional-fraud-on-the-court-by-DCF conclusion, SCOV affirms. In re G.L., 2024 VT 60.
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