The case involved the termination of parental rights of Christopher and Huyen Cleveland to their child H.T., based on the prior termination of their rights to four older siblings who had been adjudicated deprived due to physical abuse, and the parents' alleged failure to correct the underlying conditions. The trial court found H.T. deprived and terminated the parents' rights under Oklahoma law allowing termination when rights to another child have been terminated and conditions remain uncorrected. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed, holding that clear and convincing evidence supported the findings, including the parents' incomplete counseling and classes and their denial of any ongoing need for services. The court rejected challenges regarding evidentiary sufficiency, severance of trials, comments on invocation of Fifth Amendment rights, denial of transcripts, and use of prior testimony in place of live child witnesses.
The case involved plaintiffs who obtained a loan from American General Financial Services secured by two vehicles and later received a lien release on one truck after a partial payment. After the truck was repossessed, the plaintiffs sued the lender and its recovery agent for conversion, negligence, trespass to chattels, and wrongful repossession. The trial court denied the defendants' motion to compel arbitration under the loan agreement, but the Court of Civil Appeals reversed, holding that the agreement's broad arbitration provisions and delegation clause covered the claims and defenses such as waiver or satisfaction, requiring the matter to be referred to arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act.
In Pounders v. Pounders, a husband appealed a divorce court's order dividing marital property and awarding his wife about $22,400 in alimony to offset marital funds used during the marriage to pay his child support obligations from a prior marriage. The wife had been aware of and sometimes facilitated those payments. The court reversed the alimony award, holding that precedents allowing restitutionary alimony apply only when one spouse funds the other's professional education and the couple divorces shortly after completion, not to repayment of pre-existing support debts, especially where the wife consented. It affirmed the trial court's decision to award the wife her claims for unpaid wages from former employers but assign them no value, as the husband provided no evidence of their worth or marital portion.
This case involved a condemnation action by the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to acquire about five acres of the Sherrills' thirty-two-acre tract for a highway interchange. At trial, the jury awarded compensation of $7,000 per acre, which the trial court converted to a total judgment of $39,340 without recalling the jury; DOT moved for a mistrial, arguing the per-acre verdict violated the instruction requiring a single sum and that the landowners' testimony about sales of dissimilar parcels should have been excluded. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed, holding that any defect in verdict form was not fundamental error and that the trial court acted within its discretion in admitting the landowners' valuation testimony, which the jury apparently discounted given the verdict's position between the parties' expert appraisals.
The case involved Beverly Enterprises suing Devine Convalescent Care Center, a Texas entity, and its president Samuel Jewell for $27,820.80 allegedly owed under a five-year lease for a Texas nursing home facility and a related guarantee. Beverly filed the action in Murray County, Oklahoma, where Jewell resided and where the lease listed addresses for both defendants. The defendants specially appeared and moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction and improper venue, citing Devine's Texas principal place of business and a forum-selection clause in the guarantee designating Texas courts. The trial court granted the motion and transferred the case to Medina County, Texas. On appeal, the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals reviewed the jurisdictional issue de novo under the state's long-arm statute, considering whether the defendants had sufficient minimum contacts with Oklahoma to satisfy due process and whether the forum-selection clause required litigation in Texas.
This case involved the State of Oklahoma seeking to terminate Michele Wigington's parental rights to her four children after they were adjudicated deprived due to sexual abuse, exposure to pornography, and substance abuse, with the children placed in foster care. The trial court, following a jury verdict, terminated her rights on the ground that the children had been in foster care for fifteen of the most recent twenty-two months and she had failed to complete a treatment plan, citing the now-repealed 10 O.S. § 7006-1.1(A)(15). The Court of Civil Appeals reversed the judgment, holding that instructing the jury on a statutory ground repealed before the termination motion was filed constituted fundamental error, as termination must rest on currently valid statutory grounds, and the alternative ground of failure to correct conditions was not presented to the jury. The matter was remanded for further proceedings without prejudice to reasserting a valid ground.