A jury in Bergen County, N.J., awarded $950,000 to Roy Innes and his daughter after finding that the New Jersey law firm of Lesnevich & Marzano-Lesnevich had released the passport of Innes’ daughter — allowing his mother to take her to Spain where she remains. Partner Madeline Marzano-Lesnevich was named as the attorney responsible for giving the passport to Maria Jose Carrascosa.
The daughter remains in Spain with her grandparents. Carrascosa is in prison after returning to the United States in 2006. She was convicted of criminal interference with child custody and given a 14-year sentence in state prison.
The law firm was brought in to replace a prior firm fired by Carrascosa. Madeline Marzano-Lesnevich found the passport in the files and insists that she was not aware that she was supposed to act as trustee.
The ruling against the Hackensack law firm is new precedent for such cases.
The case sharply differs from the treatment of my former client Eric Foretich in the Elizabeth Morgan case. Courts in three states ruled in favor of Foretich who saw Morgan take his daughter to New Zealand. Morgan was jailed for a time and then fled the country after the intervention of friends in Congress. We ultimately had the Elizabeth Morgan law (sponsored by Tom Davis, Frank Wolf, Susan Molinari, and Comiie Morella) struck down as an unconstitutional abuse of power. The rare D.C. Circuit opinion found the act to be a bill of attainder.
Here is the Foretich opinion: foreitchus121603opn
Source: North Jersey
@anon:
It may have escaped you in your Civics 101 class, but lawyers do not make law, legislators do.
Why not speak to the unconstitutionality of the so called “Best Interest of the Child” test and how it allows, encourages, incentivizes judges to violate due process of everyone involved and just cram her/his own personal biases and thoughts on processing down on three victims?
Why don’t you lawyers try to fix that!?
@anon nurse: Thank you. What the judicial system inflicted on both me and my brother’s lives was inexcusable, and had permanent and devastating effects on us both.
There was more to it than just the rotating custody arrangement, of course, but to this day I am convinced that family law judges are the least qualified people on the face of the earth to determine what is “in a child’s best interests”.
Right behind them are the parents themselves. Most people my age had parents who divorced. I never saw any of those parents lift a finger to either determine what the best interests of their children were, nor act in the best interests of their children – and I would say that in 10% of those cases, at least one parent took actions (via seeking revenge on their spouse) that insured that the children would grow up in poverty.
The Moar You Know
Stories like yours often get lost… (Thanks.) I know about the “hell on Earth” part…
“I know of a case where the parents did not want to separate the children from the home that they grew up in, friends, schools etc…. No one really wanted to sell the house….neither divorced parent….The judge got creative and ordered every other week for the parents….the kids stayed in the house and the parent…did the week on week off….it worked for them….”
@AY: I was a child subject to such an order. My parents rolled in and out, every two weeks, for almost two years. It worked great for them. Not so much for us kids. There was no stability or peace or anything else that you might imagine with such an arrangement. Each one assumed that the other had taken care of everything, with the net result that no one took care of anything. I was 11. I had to deal with maintaining the entire household and keeping my younger sibling and I fed, clothed, at school and healthy. It was hell on Earth and was the cruelest thing that the judge could have possibly ordered as far as my sibling and I were concerned. And yes, we are both still bitter about it.
It’s not any kind of a solution. It’s a total abdication of both parental and judicial responsibility.
AY,
🙂
Anon Nurse,
Uh yeah…just ask Buddha….he lives to be of service……lol
You? Annoy? Not from where I’m sittin’…
No problem an… I awake just to annoy….. Some would seem to agree…
Thanks, AY… and thanks for the nod on the Corrections page yesterday.
anon nurse,
Don’t worry…..the rule of law regarding children is very fungible…it is up to the partys to agree…and be reasonable….or the judge makes the decisions…simple…
The thing that these people are guilty of is bad parenting….especially on the mothers side…
I know of a case where the parents did not want to separate the children from the home that they grew up in, friends, schools etc…. No one really wanted to sell the house….neither divorced parent….The judge got creative and ordered every other week for the parents….the kids stayed in the house and the parent…did the week on week off….it worked for them….
Yes. I completely agree that it’s about “the rule of law”… but, for the moment, the child is with her grandparents and, for her sake, I hope she’s doing well and has some stability, etc. until things get sorted out…
(I wish “the rule of law” really meant something… It’s a phrase that we “toss about” but, from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t exist or, rather, it only applies to some…)
It’s not about idle speculation of where she’s “better off,” it’s about the rule of law. Why was the passport in the files? For safekeeping, obviously. I don’t think $950,00 is enough.
Yes, about the child being “the ultimate victim”, as AY notes.
Maybe she’s better off with her grandparents…, but without more information, who knows…
This is most disturbing….for all on all accounts…the ultimate victim….the child…
People have children…not everyone is capable of being a parent….they have issues….then…the child/ren become the object of scorn…intended or unintended…