Woman in Custody Fight Gets 3 Days for Contempt

A woman who won a court battle against a judge who called her a “Jewish-American princess” has been sentenced by another judge to spend three days in Orange County Jail for contempt.

Nanci Rosen Carter, 35, appeared before Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Monarch in October in a bitter custody dispute with her former husband, Newport Beach attorney Howard A. Bidna. In court papers, she alleged that Monarch called her “a Jewish-American princess,” as well as “abnormal” and “obsessed.”

Monarch, who is Jewish, apologized to Carter and said he did not think the term “Jewish-American princess” was derogatory. But Carter appealed, and in January a state appellate court ruled that Monarch should be disqualified from her case.

The court battles with her ex-husband continued, however, and in January Bidna’s attorneys asked that she be held in contempt of court for violating the terms of her court-ordered visitation with her 5-year-old daughter, Molly.

On Wednesday, Orange County Superior Court Judge James A. Jackman found Carter in contempt of court on three counts and sentenced her to 72 hours in Orange County Jail, beginning April 30, court records show.

In a telephone interview Friday, Carter, who has remarried and now lives in Dallas, said she would appeal the jail sentence. She alleged that her husband has traded on his connections with an “old-boy network” of fellow attorneys and judges to further his case.

“There’s something very suspicious going on in Orange County,” she said. “It’s a fraternity. I don’t think there’s a way for me to get a fair trial. . . . He’s a senior partner in a major law firm in Newport Beach, and he sits as a judge pro tem in Superior Court.”

Carter also alleged that after Monarch was “embarrassed” by the appeals court decision and the ensuing publicity, other lawyers and judges have a vested interest in seeing her discredited.

Attorney Richard A. Keys, Bidna’s law partner, called Carter’s accusations absolutely false. “Mrs. Rosen (Carter) violated the court order, and not just in a little way, she did it in a big way,” he said. As to the accusation of a “fraternity” seeking retribution, Keys added, “I expect nothing less from Mrs. Rosen in terms of making wild accusations.”

Court records show Jackman ruled that Carter had violated the court order by taking Molly to her home overnight without permission from her husband and by keeping the girl in Dallas for more than a week after the date the child should have been returned to her father.

Carter argued that Molly had tonsillitis and strep throat and was too ill to fly, and presented evidence from a Dallas doctor to back up her claim. Keys said that Carter refused to say when she would return the child to Orange County and that a pediatrician had testified that the child could have flown home.

Jackman ruled that Carter had acted with “willful disregard” and “willful disobedience” of court orders and that she “was contemptuous beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.”

Keys said that Carter has won several court battles, including a January ruling by yet another Orange County Superior Court judge who refused to limit her visitation rights with her daughter despite a recommendation by a court-appointed psychiatrist that Carter have less contact and monitored visits with the child. Keys also noted that a variety of judges have ruled that it would be in Molly’s best interest to live with her father.