Johnny Jardim and Barbara Paez, parents of two young children born in Venezuela, separated in 2024. Paez obtained permission to take the children to Florida for a three-month summer visit but refused to return them, texting Jardim that she wanted to stay in the U.S. to give the children a better life. Jardim petitioned for the children's return under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Paez conceded that the children were habitual residents of Venezuela and that her retention violated Jardim's custody rights, but she raised four affirmative defenses: consent or acquiescence, the one-year statute of limitations with well-settled status, grave risk of harm, and the mature child exception. During the bench trial, Paez abandoned the grave risk defense due to a lack of evidence and focused only on the other three. The district court found she failed to prove any of the remaining defenses and ordered the children returned to Venezuela by January 5, 2026. Paez later sought to reopen the case via a Rule 60(b) motion, arguing her prior counsel should not have conceded the grave risk defense, but the district court denied the motion. Paez appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the return order.
The Eleventh Circuit reviewed the district court's denial of the Rule 60(b) motion for abuse of discretion. The court emphasized that in civil cases, clients must be held accountable for the acts and omissions of their attorneys. Paez had voluntarily chosen her counsel, and the court stated she cannot now avoid the consequences of her agent's strategic decisions. The opinion notes that 'an affirmative defense, once forfeited, is excluded from the case.' The court found that the prior counsel's decision to prioritize certain issues over others did not rise to the level of 'mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect' required to grant relief under Rule 60(b)(1). Furthermore, the court rejected Paez's backup argument to use Rule 60(b)(6), noting that such catchall provisions cannot be used to bypass the specific limitations and grounds of the preceding paragraphs. The court cited the principle that a defeated litigant cannot set aside a judgment merely because they failed to interpose a defense that could have been presented at trial.
The judgment requiring the immediate return of the children to Venezuela remains in full force. The decision reinforces that finality in litigation is paramount and that parties cannot use Rule 60(b) to retry issues that were strategically waived or conceded by their counsel. It clarifies that attorney negligence or strategic error does not constitute excusable neglect sufficient to reopen a final judgment in Hague Convention cases.