In Mitchell v. Mitchell,[1] the supreme court held that a wife’s challenge to a long-term protective order that had been later dissolved as unlawfully granted was dismissed as moot and neither the public interest nor the collateral consequences exceptions to the mootness doctrine applied. During the course of a short term domestic violence protective order against her, a wife sent a text message to her husband regarding the couple’s dog, violating the no contact provision of the order. At the long-term protective order hearing the court granted the husband a long-term protective order on the basis that of the text message violation. The wife appealed the grant of the long-term order, which the appellate court affirmed. The next year the husband asked the court to renew the year-long protective order, which it did on the same grounds as the previous order. The wife appealed the second order and also filed a motion asking the court to dissolve the protective order. The court dissolved the order, finding, under Whalen v. Whalen the second order was unlawfully issued. The supreme court reasoned that, because the second order had already been dissolved by the lower court, the wife’s appeal was moot and that the public interest exception to the mootness doctrine did not apply because the issue had been settled by the court in Whalen and subsequently clarified by the legislature. The court further reasoned that the requested expungement relief to allay the consequences to the wife’s reputational interest did not fit with the scope of expungement under Alaska Rule of Administration 40(a)(9) and therefore the wife’s situation did not satisfy the collateral consequences exception to the mootness doctrine. Dismissing the appeal, the supreme court found that the wife’s appeal of an already dissolved protective order did not qualify for the public interest or collateral consequences exceptions to the mootness doctrine because the court and legislature had already clarified the question at issue and the rules do not permit the expungement relief sought.
[1] 445 P.3d 660 (Alaska 2019).
