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1 Kan. App. 2d 652

573 P.2d 1095

In Re Browning

Court of Appeals of Kansas

Decided November 4, 1977

Court of Appeals of Kansas · decided 1977-11-04

Relies on Guerrero v. Capitol Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n · State v. Conkling · Carr v. Diamond

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1977-11-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 9 later decisions — most recently August 2008

9 state decisions

401977198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Foth, J.:

¶1 This is an appeal from an order adjudging the appellant, Virginia Nichols, guilty of indirect civil contempt of court. The contempt charge grew out of appellant’s failure to comply with an order, in a child custody-habeas corpus action, requiring her to deliver custody of her three children to their father.

¶2 On January 5, 1977, the trial court found appellant guilty and sentenced her to the Reno county jail until she purged herself. However, it also stayed the sentence imposed to permit her to purge herself by delivering the children at a specified time and place the following day. At oral argument counsel advised this court that the children were so delivered, and are now with their father.

¶3 Appellant was not committed for contempt, and it is apparent she never can be. The issues she presents in her appeal are serious, but they are also academic. Her position is virtually identical to that of F. G. Manzanares in Guerrero v. Capitol Federal Savings & Loan Ass’n, 197 Kan. 18, 415 P.2d 257. Mr. Manzanares, an attorney, was found guilty of indirect civil contempt for failing to pay over disputed money in his hands. He secured his release by placing the money in a joint control account with the clerk of the Supreme Court. The Court denied his attempted appeal, saying (p. 22):

*653 “He thereby purged himself of any possible contempt. There is nothing left upon which this court’s judgment might act. This court in the case of Carr v. Diamond, 192 Kan. 377, 388 P.2d 591, said,
“ ‘Appellate courts do not entertain appeals for such purpose. Reviewing courts do not decide questions which no longer exist merely to make a precedent.’ (p. 380.)”

¶4 See also, State v. Conkling, 54 Kan. 108, 37 Pac. 992.

¶5 The appeal is dismissed as moot.

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