I clearly have hacked someone off in the California judiciary, because the court's webpage has for the past several days weirdly blocked entire campus of the University of San Diego from accessing it -- a harsh remedy, to be sure. So no access to opinions, no access to case information, etc.
But fear not. I'm just hopping on other IP addresses to continue to read the stuff. Hopefully the court will correct the problem soon. (Though I'll add that numerous e-mails from USD's IT department to the court's webpage administrator have sadly gone unanswered.)
Meanwhile, in the real world, check out this opinion. Where things are much worse for everyone involved.
There's the Mother, who allegedly (1) abuses crystal meth, (2) leaves her seven-year old kid with a babysitter for days while she's high, and (3) doesn't send her child to school much when she's with him.
Then we have Father, who allegedly (1) commits domestic violence against Mother, and (2) "liv[es] in a house, sleeping in a bunk bed in a room with four others[, with] Father and Matthew [] in the top bed, while Father's partner Clara sle[eps] below with her two children," for which he pays "$500 in monthly rent."
Then there's the court, which diligently attempts to try to figure out where the kid should live under such circumstances, and whose efforts to do so are consistently frustrated by Mother's lawyer, who (unwisely) keeps interrupting the court so much that the judge is forced to terminate the hearing even before the court can make the required findings.
Finally, and most importantly, there's the seven-year old child, Matthew. Who has to endure all of this. Through entirely no fault of his own.
I'll also mention that Mother has an attorney -- on appeal, from the Los Angeles Center for Law & Justice, as well as from Gibson Dunn. Whereas father is entirely unrepresented, both below and on appeal.
Check out the opinion and see what you think the custody situation should be. Not that it's going to be easy to figure out how to work this thing even if you can come up with something; to take but one problem, Father and Mother live 45 minutes away from each other, and only Father has a car. Mother is not only far away, and very far from the child's elementary school, but says she "lived in a house with others, [but] was unsure who owned it" and has "three children besides Matthew, ages nine, 10, and 12. They were in Guatemala. Mother last saw her other children in 2007."
Much bigger problems than having your IP address blocked by the California court's webpage.
POSTSCRIPT - I subsequently received an incredibly nice e-mail from the Judicial Council's IT department about the blockage issue. It still isn't working, but it was great to get a follow-up, and good to know I'm not the only one with the problem (apparently, the court in Alpine, amongst other places, has a similar issue). Thanks also to the Reporter of Decisions for alerting the JC's IT to the issue. Super responsive by everyone.
