Father ordered to return sons to mother in UK

Client(s) Client FH

Following a four-day bench trial in the Eastern District of New York earlier in 2010, Jones Day New York attorneys Lauri Sawyer, Jonathan Muenkel, Caryn Wolfe, Matt Chow and Eric Jacobi successfully reunited a mother in England with her two children who had been wrongfully detained in New York. Their client's children had come to New York to visit their father for one month but, at the end of the visit, the father refused to return them to their home in England. He kept them in New York for nearly two years and restricted their contact with the mother. Due to this alienation, one of the children even confessed that he had forgotten what his mother looked like. In July 2010, the children were finally reunited with their mother in the UK. The father appealed the decision to the Second Circuit, which affirmed the trial court's decision to return the children to the UK.