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By PETER J. SAMPSON
An appeals court has reversed a
$424,000 award to the daughter of a Hasbrouck Heights man who sued a Hackensack
law firm, claiming its release of her passport allowed the girl to be kidnapped
to Spain by her mother in a bitter matrimonial split.
At the same time, the state
Appellate Division panel affirmed a jury’s 2011 verdict awarding $700,000 in
damages from the law firm for emotional distress to the father, Peter Innes,
plus $292,332 in interest and attorneys fees.
“Innes’s testimony was sufficient to
permit the jury to award him emotional distress damages proximately caused by
defendants’ breach of their duty,” the Superior Court appeals court said in a
67-page opinion filed Monday. “The loss in this case was particularly personal
in nature — the inability of a father to see his daughter for many years, and
the likely prospect that he may never see her again,” it said.
The judges, however, said they were
compelled to reach a different result with the award on behalf of his daughter,
Victoria: “There was simply no testimony regarding her emotional distress,
meaning the jury’s award was based upon speculation,” the opinion said.
“I am very happy the appellate court
agreed that these lawyers had no right to surrender my daughter’s passport and
that their actions were a violation of their professional rules of conduct,”
Innes said Tuesday.
He added he was disappointed the judicial
panel vacated the damages, interest and legal fees awarded to his daughter in
the suit against the firm Lesnevich & Marzano-Lesnevich.
“Because she is concealed from me in
Spain, I could not offer any proof of her emotional harm. However, I think it
goes without saying that a 4-year-old child, who is taken from her father, is
certain to have been emotionally harmed,” he said.
Walter A. Lesnevich, a partner in
the Lesnevich & Marzano-Lesnevich firm, said the firm, which appealed the
original awards, intends to press a bid to overturn the Innes award to the
state’s highest court.
“This is just the interim decision,”
he said of the appellate ruling. “We’re appealing to the Supreme Court to
remove the rest of the award. So it’s got another year at least to go.”
Innes said he does not think that he
will he will pursue a further appeal.
The May 2011 verdict stemmed from an
acrimonious matrimonial dispute between Innes and Maria Jose Carrascosa, a
native of Spain. The couple separated in 2004 after a five-year marriage. The
two signed a parenting agreement in October 2004 to take care of their only
daughter, who was 4 at the time. The agreement prohibited either party from
taking the child on an international trip without the consent of the other
parent. As part of that clause, Carrascosa’s attorney was obligated to hold
Victoria’s American passport in trust.
After Carrascosa changed lawyers,
Madeline Marzano-Lesnevich, a partner at the Hackensack firm, turned over the
passport to her in December 2004. A month later, Victoria was on a plane to
England with her grandfather and then on to Spain, where she remains.
A Superior Court judge in
Hackensack, meanwhile, granted full custody of the child to Innes and ordered
the mother to bring the child back to New Jersey. Carrascosa refused, arguing
that the Spanish courts have jurisdiction over the case. The courts in Spain
ruled that Victoria cannot leave the country until she is 18.
In 2006, Carrascosa, an attorney
admitted to practice in the European Union, returned to New Jersey and was
arrested for contempt of court. Bergen County prosecutors later charged her
with criminal interference with child custody. She was convicted and is now in
the eighth year of a 14-year prison sentence.
Innes, who runs a small graphics design
and advertising company, said he has fought in state and federal courts and in
Spanish courts to be reunited with his daughter. “I blame a lot of this on the
Lesnevich lawyers, who the jury said, and the appellate court agreed, had
absolutely no right to give up my daughter’s passport. That act of giving up
the passport is what enabled my daughter to be abducted,” he said. “I’m hoping maybe this money allows
me to hire another lawyer in Spain and fight for my daughter over there,” he
said. He added that his daughter, who he hasn’t seen since she was 4½ , will
turn 14 this month. “My daughter was abducted over nine years ago. It’s been a
long strange trip through the legal system in two countries. But in the end, I
know that everything I’ve done has been with my daughter’s best interest at
heart, and I am certain that someday she will understand that.”
