Ruling Upheld Barring Suit Against Father in ’64 Abandonment Case

A father who changed his name and disappeared 23 years ago, allegedly to avoid paying child support, cannot be sued by his ex-wife and four daughters for fraud and emotional distress because they waited too long to file suit, a state appellate court ruled Monday.

While saying that Patricia Spellis and her daughters had introduced “fascinating questions” of liability in their attempt to sue James S. Lawn, the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana declined to consider them.

Upholding the ruling of an Orange County Superior Court judge, the justices found in a 3-0 decision that the daughters lost the opportunity to sue their father three years after they reached the age of 18 because of a statute of limitations. The youngest daughter, Robyn, turned 18 in 1980, and the suit was not filed until 1984.

Lawn, living under the name of James S. Martin, was discovered in Santa Rosa in 1983. Spellis’ attorney, Patricia Herzog, was able to collect about $21,000 in back payments from Lawn by attaching his earnings and bank accounts.

New Arena of Liability

In filing a $2-million suit for emotional distress, Herzog sought to open a new arena in liability, the justices said. “With respect to violation of the statutory duty to support, they ask that we create a new tort,” Justice Edward J. Wallin wrote in the opinion.

“Do allegations of a parent’s clandestine name change and deliberate concealment of his . . . whereabouts, in an effort to escape paying court-ordered child support, (constitute) fraud?” Wallin wrote.

“Is such conduct ‘outrageous’ enough to constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress? Should the child ‘victim’ of such parental abandonment be limited to recovering only back-due support payments or should . . . she be allowed compensatory damages for years of hardship?”

Fascinating as these questions are, the court decided that a three-year statute of limitations applied to the case, so this was not the case in which to decide such issues.

Herzog said she would ask the justices for a rehearing.

“The decision does not really speak to the substantive issue,” Herzog said, “as to whether there is a cause of action for fraud when a person changes his name for the purpose of avoiding his child support obligations.”

Lawn’s attorney, Mario W. Mainero Jr., said: “There is no authority out there for the propositions being advanced by the plaintiff.”

Grew Up Together

The case involved the complicated matrimonial history of Spellis and Lawn, who grew up together in a small Ohio town near Toledo, Herzog said.

They were married in Ohio in 1952, divorced there in 1963, remarried in California in May, 1964, then divorced again in September of that year.

On Sept. 24, 1964, an Orange County Superior Court judge set child support payments of $12.50 a week for each of the couple’s four daughters: Ruth, 11; Renee, 8; Rhonda, 3, and Robyn, 2.

Lawn disappeared the same day and failed to make any of the payments.

Joining Wallin in the opinion he wrote in the case was Orange County Superior Court Judge Donald E. Smallwood, sitting temporarily on the Court of Appeal. Justice Sheila Prell Sonenshine filed a concurring opinion.