Moreau v. White
Split Score
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Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed in Part
In this Hague Convention child-abduction appeal, the Fifth Circuit upheld the district court’s order requiring the return of two children to Canada, finding they were habitually resident there and that the father wrongfully retained them in Texas. The court, however, vacated the district court’s injunction that barred related Texas state-court proceedings and purported to direct the Canadian courts, holding that such orders violated comity principles.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether federal courts may invoke equitable/common-law defenses not enumerated in the Hague Convention (e.g., unclean-hands or judicial-estoppel) to deny the Convention’s mandatory return remedy.
Circuit Positions
Equitable/common-law defenses outside the Convention are unavailable; courts must limit defenses to those expressly listed in the treaty.
Courts retain inherent equitable authority and may apply extra-treaty defenses (e.g., unclean hands, fugitive disentitlement, judicial estoppel) to deny return.
Conflict Summary
The Fifth, Third, and Fourth Circuits read the Convention as providing an exclusive list of affirmative defenses, holding that courts may not rely on unenumerated equitable doctrines to block a child’s return. The Sixth Circuit, by contrast, has held that courts retain inherent equitable power and may apply defenses such as unclean-hands or fugitive-disentitlement to bar the remedy, indicating that the Convention does not fully displace common-law equity.