Family Law: Restraining Orders - Ginger Murray and Dixon Gahnz

Sly- Ginger Murray and Dixon Gahnz from Lawton and Cates. We have all sorts of great family topics today don’t we?

Ginger- It doesn’t cease to amaze me how often we’ll have the titles in the news.

Sly- So we’ve got a mother who feels that it’s necessary to go with her daughters to go fight people, take them to fights so they can defend themselves. Mother of the year?

Ginger- Absolutely not. Not a good idea. We didn’t bring our criminal attorney with us but I can speak from the family perspective on that. My understanding is that her child was having some issues with friends. I will tell you, Sly, that there has been a lot of media coverage on bullying. One of the things that I’m able to help families with is to get restraining orders to try and stop that behavior.

Sly- Really?

Ginger- The courts are very sensitive to what’s going on in the schools.

Sly- Really? There are schools now where because of texting and everything, parents get involved in the fights at school.

Ginger- I actually talked to an associate principal last night and she said that it’s really tough for schools to enforce these anti-bullying policies because the parents are definitely defending the kids. She even talked to me about two mothers who ended up going Target, and they ended up duking it out over the issue the kids started.

Sly- Very dignified. That’s quite a mother role model isn’t it, when you see your mother punching out some other woman at Target?

Ginger- I’ll tell you, had she come to me we would’ve come up with a different plan.

Sly- By the way, if you’re going to fight like that with another woman, don’t go to Target. Go to Wal-mart. Go to Wal-mart. Alright, so don’t take the law into your own hands. You can actually get a restraining order against a bully child?

Ginger- You can. Actually the law changed recently. It used to be that adults were the only ones that could file restraining orders, but now children can actually file restraining orders on their own. The court will decide whether or not an additional attorney will be involved, a guardian ad litem, looking out for the child’s best interests.

Sly- You know, I’ve been called a bully. I’m wondering if politicians can take a restraining order out against me.

Ginger- Come to me and I’ll represent you. The firm works with families that represent both sides of these. As you might guess, sometimes people are falsely accused of harassment and abuse.

Sly- So you can never take all of this stuff at face value?

Ginger- Right. It’s important to get involved early so you can learn about the facts of the case. One of the reasons I asked for Dixon today is because sometimes it’s more than just seeking protection for your child. Sometimes it’s about talking to the parents. The way parents might hear a little louder is to go after money. There are also civil remedies available and that’s when I bring Dixon into the conversation and get him involved with the clients if there is a claim for damages.

Sly- There are new laws as well, right?

Ginger- On damages?

Sly- No not on damages, just on bullying.

Ginger- Absolutely.

Sly- Which makes it easier to get damages?

Ginger- I think once you have an order that says, this kid was found by a court to be a bully, I hand that off to Dixon and now he has a piece of paper that says the court has already heard this and has found that there is a need for protection.

Sly- Dixon, in a lot of these cases, by the way we’re talking with the folks from Lawton and Cates here this morning. What’s your phone number?

Ginger- 282-6200 and a lot of our clients are getting to us now through our website which is lawtoncates.com.

Sly- Alright, we have a link for that up on our website slysoffice.com. Dixon isn’t this kind of getting bled out of a turnip, when you go after somebody’s parents. They may not all necessarily be wealthy, what do you do?

Dixon- Well there’s a couple of things that you’re dealing with. First is the idea that the children are the people involved in the fight. For instance if you look at a typical bullying situation, it’s a battery, meaning that somebody beats somebody up. In that situation the parent obviously wasn’t involved in the fight. We’re not talking about our moms going to Wal-mart or Target or anything like that. What you’re dealing with is a situation of laws in Wisconsin that impose penalties or reliability on the parents. There are special rules that if your kid goes and beats somebody up, you can be on the hook for up to $5,000 per occurrence. If it’s a bullying situation in what we consider the classic sense where Johnny steals your milk money on Monday and he gives you a swirly on Tuesday and he punches you on Wednesday, those are different occurrences. Are you trying to get money out of people that don’t necessarily have it? Sometimes, yes. That certainly is a consideration that you look at. However, what the law is, both state and federal, when you do intentional acts such as batteries, they don’t let you get out of it. That stays with you, period, until it’s paid. You can’t go to bankruptcy court and get rid of it like you could if you got in a car accident.

Sly- Really?

Dixon- If it’s a judgment, that’s something that’s going to be attached to property that you own which would then for instance if you want to refinance your house, that’s going to be difficult down the line for you.

Sly- If, god forbid, your child commits suicide, can you sue the parents of a bully for loss of companionship?

Dixon- Potentially that is a claim that’s out there. It’s a tough one though. It’s not one that I would necessarily be interested in taking.

Ginger- There are cases out there right now where the parents are going after the school. In preparation for out meeting today I looked up on the internet and sadly I was able to find approximately 15 different kids in the month of January that killed themselves and the media reports that those suicides were based on bullying. There’s a case going up to federal court, I couldn’t find the information on that. It seems fairly new. But there was another case where there was a child named Tom who had been being bullied in school and finally one day he reported it to the principal. The bullies were suspended, but so was Tom. Then Tom comes back and he gets bullied again. He had a physical impairment and the kids were just torturing him.

Sly- There was a story about that on TV last night. That program actually had the most popular kid get in a room with the kid that was being picked on. They made them buddies and boy it ended pronto. We’ve had this at Jefferson Middle School where this woman—I teach my son to stand up for himself, he’s been repeatedly bullied, so when he stands up for himself he gets in as much trouble as the bullies.

Ginger- I think that comes to having a conversation with the school district. I’ve been involved in cases where families have had to get restraining orders for children. I do reach out to the school and talk about how this is going to need to be a partnership. I think the schools are pretty receptive to avoiding liability for not being proactive.

Sly- Dixon do you show up at a school when a parent calls an attorney to deal with the school? When you pick up the phone to call the principal, can you can action?

Dixon- That’s not something that I would deal with in that manner. It would be a situation of alerting the school that there is a potential problem. It’s tough because Wisconsin has discretionary immunity for the schools for a lot of these types of actions in terms of their policies and their procedures. There are limits under Wisconsin law as to what claims you can make.

Sly- You know with cell phones now—there was a kid that was on TV the other day who was being bullied and luckily somebody took cell phone footage of it. The parents couldn’t get any action. These kids actually hung him up on a fence.

Ginger- I saw that.

Sly- Of course he ended up on The View and he got to meet the Philadelphia Eagles and it all turned out great for him. But had that footage not existed, right?

Ginger- It is often one person’s word against the other person’s.

Sly- Is part of this collecting evidence?

Ginger- Absolutely. We would encourage someone to call the office when they are first having that gut reaction that their child is having problems at school and they’re wondering what they can do. I think that’s when you get involved. Dixon gets involved after there has been something that rises to a level of abuse. We can get a restraining order before it gets to that. When a child is engaging in a force of conduct that serves no legitimate purpose, that’s the language. But when they’re pushing, harassing, or even kind of keeping the child at a distance, keeping them confined and not including them, calling them names, anything that is persistent and serves no legitimate purpose. We can make an argument that that rises to the level of harassment for the purposes of a restraining order.

Sly- Ginger and Dixon with us from Lawton and Cates 1670 WTDY. Your website again?

Ginger- lawtoncates.com

Sly- Did you see the story about the woman in Sheboygan who was arrested for killing her baby 50 years ago? Her adult children had finally come forward and talked about the abuse that they went through for years. I don’t know if psycho therapy helped with this. They arrested her and this murder took place in the late 50s.

Ginger- Wow.

Sly- So here’s a question for you, kids that are abused by their parents, they can’t hire a lawyer right?

Ginger- How are they going to get to us? But they’re in schools and if a school is alerted to abuse they are mandatory reporters. They are required to make a report if a child is a victim of abuse. I think that is usually how children of abuse are brought into the system is because someone like a school official, a teacher, a mandatory reporter has been made aware of it.

Sly- Dixon do the tort reform laws that have been passed in the last few weeks affect any of this?

Dixon- Yes and I think that you and I may have a conversation down the line as to how because there are a lot of implications as to the new rules in the new tort reform. Anybody that’s trying to bring a claim when they’ve been injured, however they’ve been injured and this would be one of those areas.

Sly- The burden of proof might be higher now?

Dixon- No the burden of proof hasn’t changed, but a lot of these new laws are designed to reduce access to the courts and to limit the amount that you can recover when you have been wronged. Those two things, in my opinion, always factor against the individual and in favor of the wealthier insurance companies/corporations.

Sly- Not shocking considering this legislature. Ginger Murray, Dixon Gahnz, Lawton and Cates. Phone number?

Ginger- Thank you. 282-6200. And I think I would be remise if I didn’t bring up that children will end up having an attorney appointed to them in these sorts of cases. That’s called a guardian ad litem. I serve in that capacity as well. That’s an attorney who is appointed by the court to look out for the child’s best interest. If the court is made aware of the situation, the court will appoint an attorney to represent their best interests. It’s a matter of getting that information to someone so we can seek protection for them.

Sly- Thank you for joining us this morning.