In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
M AGNUS N ORINDER,
Petitioner-Appellee,
v.
S HARON F UENTES,
Respondent-Appellant.
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Illinois.
No. 10-CV-391-WDS—William D. Stiehl, Judge.
A RGUED JUNE 9, 2011—D ECIDED S EPTEMBER 6, 2011
Before M ANION, W OOD , and H AMILTON, Circuit Judges.
W OOD , Circuit Judge. Although the federal courts
normally have nothing to do with child custody issues,
there is an exception for cases that arise under the Inter-
national Child Abduction Remedies Act (the Act), 42
U.S.C. §§ 11601 et seq., which implements the Hague
Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child
Abduction (the Convention), T.I.A.S. No. 11,670, 1343
U.N.T.S. 89 (Oct. 25, 1980). This is one of those cases.
2 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
Petitioner, Magnus Norinder, filed this suit against his
wife, Sharon Fuentes, seeking the return of their son, JRN,
to Sweden. Norinder is from Sweden and Fuentes is
from the United States; both countries are parties to the
Convention. The Act entitles a person whose child
has wrongfully been removed to the United States in
violation of the Convention to petition for return of the
child to the child’s country of “habitual residence,” unless
certain exceptions apply. See generally Abbott v. Abbott,
130 S. Ct. 1983 (2010); Altamiranda Vale v. Avila, 538
F.3d 581, 583-84 (7th Cir. 2008).
The battle here is over which country—Sweden or the
United States—is JRN’s habitual residence. Norinder
asserts that Sweden is, and that Fuentes abducted
JRN to the United States in violation of the Convention.
The district court agreed and ordered JRN returned to
Sweden, where Norinder is living and where Fuentes
and JRN lived until recently. In this appeal, Fuentes
challenges the district court’s conclusion and asserts
that the court should have chosen the United States
instead. Both for that reason, and because she charges
that there is a grave risk that JRN’s return to Sweden
will expose him to physical or psychological harm (a
defense under the Convention that the abducter may
invoke to block return of a child), she argues that the
district court’s order should be reversed. Finally,
Fuentes asserts that the district court unfairly limited
discovery before resolving the case and ordered her to
pay too much in fees and costs to Norinder. We con-
clude that the district court’s decisions are sound in all
respects, and we therefore affirm.
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 3
I
Norinder and Fuentes, who are both physicians, met
on the Internet in 2006. Norinder, a citizen of Sweden, lived
in Borås, Sweden at the time; and Fuentes, who is a citizen
of the United States, lived in Texas. The relationship
progressed quickly: in February 2007, Fuentes visited
Sweden and the couple got engaged; in April, she re-
turned and they conceived a child; in August they were
married in Sweden. After the wedding, Fuentes returned
to Houston, Texas, to complete a fellowship in pathology.
Norinder was chief physician of a hospital in Borås at
the time. He took paternity leave in January 2008 to join
Fuentes in Houston. JRN was born there the next month.
In July, the whole family moved to Sweden.
It was not long before the relationship became rocky.
Fuentes and Norinder had many fights, some of which
escalated into physical confrontations. There are charges
that JRN was harmed in the midst of these fights. On a
number of occasions, Fuentes moved out of the family’s
house in Sweden—once to an apartment she apparently
had rented in secret. Professional difficulties com-
pounded the personal strife. Fuentes did not keep the
job that Norinder secured for her at his hospital in
Borås, and Norinder was suspended from work while
the hospital investigated charges instigated by Fuentes
that Norinder had substance abuse problems. Fuentes
accused Norinder of drinking too much and abusing
prescription drugs, and there is some evidence that he
has had difficulty with drugs and alcohol in the past. While
the two were in Sweden, divorce proceedings were initi-
4 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
ated and then abandoned on a number of occasions. None
of this, however, is directly relevant to the resolution of
this case. Our authority over Norinder’s petition extends
only to the question whether JRN was abducted and
should be returned to Sweden; we do not sit to resolve
a messy domestic conflict. See 42 U.S.C. § 11601(b)(4);
Hague Convention art. 19; Shalit v. Coppe, 182 F.3d 1124,
1128 (9th Cir. 1999); Friedrich v. Friedrich, 78 F.3d 1060, 1063-
64 (6th Cir. 1996).
The event that gave rise to this proceeding occurred after
two years of the unhappiness we have just recounted.
On March 17, 2010, under the guise of a two-week vaca-
tion to Texas, Fuentes traveled to the United States
with JRN in tow. On April 7, 2010—the day she was
scheduled to return to Sweden—Fuentes sent Norinder a
text message saying that she was keeping their son and
planned to remain in the United States. Norinder hired
a lawyer and for about a month searched for Fuentes
and JRN. They were not in Texas or any other place that
he might have expected. Eventually, he found them in
southern Illinois, and on May 26, 2010, his lawyer
there filed the petition for return of the child that is
now before us.
II
That brings us to the district court proceedings and
to Fuentes’s first argument on appeal. She contends
that the district court improperly cut off her pretrial
discovery, thereby seriously undermining her ability
to show that Norinder poses a grave risk of harm to
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 5
JRN. Fuentes frames this as a legal challenge; in her
view the district court erred by refusing to apply the
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to the proceedings. That
accusation, not surprisingly, is not a fair summary of
the district court’s rulings.
The district court was properly trying to move this
case along on an expedited basis. Norinder’s petition was
filed on May 26, 2010, and on June 4 the district court
set June 22 as the date for the start of a bench trial.
(All dates are in 2010, and so we do not repeat that.) On
June 8, Fuentes hired a lawyer. A few days later, on
June 15, Norinder filed a discovery plan that recom-
mended completing discovery by June 18. On June 16,
Fuentes’s lawyer filed his first appearance in the case. On
June 21, the day before trial was set to begin, Fuentes
filed a response to Norinder’s petition and in it re-
quested additional discovery for the first time. She
said that the court’s current schedule would interfere
with her effort to gather evidence needed for trial, and
her lawyer submitted an affidavit outlining what she
was requesting: medical records relating to Norinder’s
alleged alcohol and drug use; documents that might
reveal past domestic violence; Norinder’s prescription
drug records; and all documentation kept by his em-
ployer. On June 22, at the first of five hearings held by
the district court over a month-long period, Fuentes
requested a continuance, urging again that she needed
the additional discovery to proceed with the case.
The district judge denied the request and went ahead
with the hearing. Later that day, the court said:
6 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
And let’s see, now I would like for Dr. Norinder, as
soon as we finish today, to execute a waiver or a
release for, if the Respondent wishes to have it, for
your medical records since January 2008 [the month
before JRN’s birth], and employment records, any
prescription records, any alcohol or drug abuse treat-
ment records, and any legal records relative to any
domestic abuse, or any crimes for that matter, and
any report of investigations at the hospital in Sweden.
And I know those won’t be here tomorrow, but
I suspect they can be obtained expeditiously.
The hearing resumed on three additional days in June.
On June 30, the district court determined that JRN’s
habitual residence was Sweden and that Norinder had
demonstrated that his rights of custody under Swedish
law had been violated when Fuentes abducted JRN to
the United States. The court limited the remaining pro-
ceedings, which were to take place at the end of July, to
the question whether JRN would be exposed to a grave
risk of harm if he was returned.
All of Fuentes’s reasons for seeking more time for
discovery before trial related to the grave-risk-of-harm
defense—that is, to the part of the case that the court
had not yet resolved. On July 14, Norinder produced the
medical and employment records that the district court
had ordered on the first day of trial; he did not produce
any documents relating to past prescription drug use.
On July 22, the district court held the final day of
hearings to consider whether Norinder posed a threat
to JRN. The court concluded that he did not, and on
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 7
July 23, it issued an order requiring the return of JRN to
Sweden.
Fuentes takes the position that the court’s denial of
her request for pretrial discovery is an error of law
because, she says, the court failed to apply the Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure to the case. This argument is a
non-starter. There is no question that the Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure apply to cases brought under the Act
and the Convention in federal court. See Kijowska v. Haines,
463 F.3d 583, 589 (7th Cir. 2006); see also Pielage v.
McConnell, 516 F.3d 1282 (11th Cir. 2008); Cantor v. Cohen,
442 F.3d 196 (4th Cir. 2006); March v. Levine, 249 F.3d
462 (6th Cir. 2001). But there is also nothing in the
district court’s opinion that suggests that it was acting
outside of the framework established by the Rules.
Fuentes made a discovery request on June 21 and the
next day asked for more time to pursue that discovery.
Such requests occur routinely. As in any case, the
question for us is whether the district court’s decision to
deny additional discovery was an abuse of discretion, e.g.,
Walker v. Sheahan, 526 F.3d 973, 977-78 (7th Cir. 2008).
We will reverse a decision only if it resulted in actual
and substantial prejudice, Packman v. Chicago Tribune
Co., 267 F.3d 628, 646-47 (7th Cir. 2001). See generally
F ED. R. C IV. P. 61.
Fuentes’s arguments in this court are in some tension
with one another. On the one hand, she contends that
she has shown by clear and convincing evidence that
JRN would be harmed if returned to Sweden and that
she thus has stated a defense under article 13(b) of the
8 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
Convention (an argument to which we return shortly).
At the same time, her discovery argument is based on
the premise that she was prejudiced by the judge’s
decision because, had she been given access to records of
Norinder’s history of alcoholism, drug use, and domestic
abuse, she would have been able to show with greater
certainty that JRN faced a grave risk of harm in Sweden.
In the end, however, we can disregard this problem. Any
way one looks at the case, the district court’s manage-
ment was eminently reasonable.
A party who seeks additional discovery must let the
district court know in a timely fashion. E.g., Kalis v. Colgate-
Palmolive Co., 231 F.3d 1049, 1058 (7th Cir. 2000). Fuentes’s
lawyer was aware that a trial date of June 22 had been
set at the moment he was hired on June 8 (or he should
have made himself aware of that fact); the lawyer had
Norinder’s expedited discovery plan in hand on June 15,
and so he knew that it proposed a completion date
for discovery of June 18. It would have been easy to ask
the judge for more than three days. Yet Fuentes said
nothing about a need for additional discovery until the
day before trial and did not request a continuance until
the morning it was to start. The district court was under
no obligation to push back the proceedings when
Fuentes had missed multiple opportunities to tell the
court that she needed more time.
Despite the late notice, the district court actually ac-
commodated Fuentes’s request for additional informa-
tion. We quoted above the court’s order during the
first hearing telling Norinder to produce precisely the
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 9
documents that Fuentes contended she needed before
trial could begin. The court recognized that those docu-
ments could not be retrieved right away, and so it took
the additional step of first resolving all of the issues in
the dispute that were unrelated to the document produc-
tion it had ordered. The question of grave risk of harm
was put off until a week after Norinder produced the
requested records. There is no evidence in the record
that Fuentes ever objected to the document production
order; nor did she suggest after Norinder had furnished
the additional documentation that she needed any-
thing more.
And if this were not enough to support the conclu-
sion that the district court did not abuse its discretion
by denying additional discovery (and it is), the denial of
a continuance was the correct course here because of
the time-sensitive nature of the case, filed as it was
under an international convention designed to protect
children unlawfully abducted to foreign countries.
Courts have leeway to limit discovery in many circum-
stances where the additional discovery would under-
mine the litigation. See, e.g., Semien v. Life Ins. Co. of North
America, 436 F.3d 805, 815 (7th Cir. 2006) (ERISA exam-
ple). The Convention and its implementing Act are chock
full of the language of urgency and in no uncertain terms
contemplate expedited procedures to guarantee that
children are returned quickly to the correct jurisdiction.
See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 11605 (providing relaxed rules for
document authentication); id. § 11601(a)(4) (discussing
the need for “prompt” return); Hague Convention art. 1
(stating that a purpose of the Convention is “to secure
10 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
the prompt return of children wrongfully removed”); id.
art. 2 (requiring state parties to “use the most expeditious
procedures available”); id. art. 11 (“The judicial or admin-
istrative authorities . . . shall act expeditiously in pro-
ceedings for the return of children.”); id. art. 18 (“The
provisions of this Chapter do not limit the power of a
judicial or administrative authority to order the return
of the child at any time.”) (emphasis added). In that
respect, the adjudication of a petition for return of a
child is much like a district court’s exercise of equitable
power in the context of a preliminary injunction or a
temporary restraining order. In both circumstances,
discovery often must proceed quickly, the district court
must apprise itself of the relevant facts, and a decision
must be rendered on an expedited basis. The Sixth
Circuit in March v. Levine affirmed a district court’s deci-
sion to grant summary judgment to a father seeking
return of his children to Mexico under the Convention
without any discovery or evidentiary hearing at all.
249 F.3d at 473-75. Like the Sixth Circuit, we conclude
that an expedited schedule is appropriate when a court
is considering a petition for relief under the Conven-
tion. Nothing about the district court’s schedule in this
case was at all objectionable, particularly in light of the
lack of complaint about the materials actually produced.
III
Fuentes also presents two arguments on the merits of
the district court’s decision: first, that it erred by finding
that Sweden was JRN’s habitual place of residence, and
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 11
second, that it erred by finding that she failed to show
by clear and convincing evidence that sending JRN back
to his father will expose the child to grave harm, excusing
the obligation to return him that would otherwise
exist under the Act and the Convention. We address
these in turn. We review the court’s factual findings
(including its credibility findings) for clear error and its
conclusion that the facts do not clearly establish a grave
risk of harm de novo. Cuellar v. Joyce, 596 F.3d 505, 509
(9th Cir. 2010).
A
The Act provides for the return of a child wrongfully
removed to the United States in violation of the Conven-
tion. 42 U.S.C. § 11603(b). As we explained in Altamiranda
Vale, wrongful removal is defined as removal “in breach
of rights of custody” vested in the party who complains
of the removal; to prevent forum shopping, rights of
custody are defined according to the law of the country
that is the child’s “habitual residence.” 538 F.3d at 583-84;
see also Kijowska, 463 F.3d at 585-86. The first step for
a court considering a petition is to determine the
child’s habitual residence. The forum-shopping concern,
we have said, means that habitual residence must be
“based on the everyday meaning of these words rather
than on the legal meaning that a particular jurisdiction
attaches to them,” Altamiranda Vale, 538 F.3d at 583; for
example, habitual residence is not necessarily the same
as a jurisdiction’s conception of “domicile,” Kijowska,
463 F.3d at 586-87. In Koch v. Koch, 450 F.3d 703 (7th Cir.
12 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
2006), we discussed in detail how habitual residence
should be determined, and we adopted a version of the
analysis set out by the Ninth Circuit in Mozes v. Mozes, 239
F.3d 1067 (9th Cir. 2001). The question is whether a
prior place of residence (in this case, the United States)
was effectively abandoned and a new residence estab-
lished (here, Sweden) “by the shared actions and intent
of the parents coupled with the passage of time.”
Koch, 450 F.3d at 715. Often parents will not agree
about what their shared intentions were once litigation
is underway, and so we must take account of the par-
ents’ actions as well as what they say. Id. at 714.
This case is not a close one. Although JRN was born in
Houston, Texas, the family moved to Sweden five
months after the child’s birth and lived there until the
trip Fuentes took that triggered this lawsuit. Fuentes says
that the 2008 move to Sweden was supposed to be a
temporary relocation and that she never would have
gone if she thought it was a permanent move. As a
result, she continues, she never shared the intent to
abandon the United States as her and JRN’s habitual
residence. The district court was unconvinced:
[T]he uncontroverted evidence is that [Fuentes] had
at least 80% of her personal items shipped to
Sweden in July 2008, including two automobiles. She
applied for and received permanent residency status
in Sweden as of the end of 2009. She was engaged in
negotiations for a position at a hospital in another
city [in Sweden] and she and Norinder had looked
for homes in that city. She took Swedish lessons right
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 13
up to the time she left for the United States. Notably,
she did not retain a residence in the United State[s].
She did not have a house, nor was there any evidence
introduced of a driver’s license, or taxes paid in the
United States.
This was enough to convince the district court that
Fuentes shared the intent to reside in Sweden with
Norinder and JRN. It is enough to convince us as well.
That Fuentes or Norinder thought that they might one
day return to the United States does not mean that the
United States remained the child’s habitual residence.
Koch was a closer case than this one, and there we men-
tioned that an intention or hope to return does not
prevent a new residence from being established. 450 F.3d
at 717-19. “When the child moves to a new country ac-
companied by both parents, who take steps to set up a
regular household together, the period [of time the
child has been in the country] need not be long.” Mozes, 239
F.3d at 1078. That logic applies here. The district court’s
determination that JRN’s habitual place of residence
is Sweden was not clearly erroneous.
B
Article 13(b) of the Convention and 42 U.S.C.
§ 11603(e)(2)(A) provide that when a respondent demon-
strates by clear and convincing evidence that there is
a grave risk that the child’s return would expose the
child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise
place the child in an intolerable situation, the automatic
return required by the Convention should not go for-
14 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
ward. See Abbott, 130 S. Ct. at 1997; Altamiranda Vale,
538 F.3d at 587; Baran v. Beaty, 526 F.3d 1340, 1352-53 (11th
Cir. 2008); Walsh v. Walsh, 221 F.3d 204, 220-21 (1st Cir.
2000). Fuentes argues that she has met this burden. She
bases her assertion that Norinder poses a serious risk of
harm to JRN on a handful of serious fights the couple
had; an incident in which Fuentes contends that
Norinder threw JRN on the ground during an argument;
allegations that Norinder is addicted to prescription
drugs and that he abuses alcohol; and the testimony of
two psychiatrists, Drs. Roth and Woodham, who
appeared on Fuentes’s behalf at trial. Norinder responds
that he is a fit and loving parent; he disputes that he ever
threw JRN or harmed the child in any way—in fact he
accuses Fuentes of dropping JRN. Norinder presented
testimony from his long-time psychiatrist, Dr. Vikander,
about his history of drug and alcohol abuse. He asserts
that Fuentes fell far short of showing the requisite grave
risk of harm required by the Convention.
The district court agreed with Norinder on every point.
It found that Fuentes’s testimony about Norinder’s past
behavior was not credible, and it expressly found
Norinder’s story about who dropped JRN more plausible.
The court also thought that Norinder’s distant history
of drug and alcohol abuse did not suggest that he would
harm JRN. It was not persuaded by the testimony of
Fuentes’s expert witnesses. While they both testified
generally about the effect of substance abuse on
children, neither had evaluated Norinder in any meaning-
ful way—Dr. Woodham had seen Norinder on three
occasions in 2008, and Dr. Roth had never interacted with
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 15
him at all. The past fights, the court said, were best
viewed as “minor domestic squabbles” rather than any-
thing detrimental to JRN. The district court concluded,
“[T]here is no credible evidence that this return of the
child to the custody of the Petitioner will, in any manner,
present a grave risk of harm.”
We find no fault in the lower court’s factual findings.
We said in Van De Sande v. Van De Sande that “[c]oncern
with comity among nations argues for a narrow inter-
pretation of the ‘grave risk of harm’ defense; but the
safety of children is paramount.” 431 F.3d 567, 572 (7th
Cir. 2005). Because the court in this sort of case is respon-
sible for determining which country’s courts should
adjudicate the domestic dispute and not resolving the
dispute itself, we have stressed that the risk of harm
must truly be grave. Id. at 570. The respondent must
present clear and convincing evidence of this grave
harm because any more lenient standard would create
a situation where the exception would swallow the
rule. Simcox v. Simcox, 511 F.3d 594, 605 (6th Cir. 2007).
Fuentes has not met this demanding standard. She
has given us no reason to doubt the district court’s credi-
bility findings, including its decision to credit
Norinder’s testimony over her own and its view that
Norinder’s long-term psychiatrist provided more
accurate information than doctors who had not treated
him before. As Fuentes says in her brief, “[E]ven the
most objective observer would fairly describe the trial
proceedings as a swearing match between Norinder
and [Fuentes].” Without some compelling evidence
16 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
otherwise, we must agree with the district court’s con-
clusion that Norinder never threw JRN on the ground,
and that whatever drinking and drug problems have
existed do not affect the outcome here. There is nothing
in this case like the death threat issued by the father
that was cause for great concern in Van de Sande, 431 F.3d
at 570; in fact, this case strikes us as much more like
Altamiranda Vale, where we decided that vague evidence
that a petitioner-father had hit his child with a video-
game cord in the past was not enough to support a
defense under article 13(b) of the Convention, 538 F.3d
at 587. Based on the facts it found, the district court’s
decision to order JRN returned to Sweden was correct.
IV
Finally, Fuentes assaults the district court’s award of
fees and costs to Norinder. The Act requires courts to
award fees and costs to prevailing parties:
Any court ordering the return of a child pursuant to
an action brought under section 11603 of this title
shall order the respondent to pay necessary expenses
incurred by or on behalf of the petitioner, including
court costs, legal fees, foster home or other care
during the course of proceedings in the action, and
transportation costs related to the return of the child,
unless the respondent establishes that such order
would be clearly inappropriate.
42 U.S.C. § 11607(b)(3). Fuentes challenges the district
court’s award from two different angles: first, she objects
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 17
to particular line items that Norinder claimed in his
motion for fees and costs; and, second, she says that her
financial situation is so dire that she should not be
required to pay fees or costs at all.
The district court used the lodestar method to
calculate attorney’s fees and carefully evaluated all of the
expenses that Norinder claimed. It reduced the total
amount of time billed by Norinder’s lawyer and
paralegal by 20% and cut the fee charged by the lawyer
down to $300 an hour and that charged by the paralegal
to $125 an hour. In addition, the court excluded expert
witness fees and expenses that were paid to Norinder’s
psychiatrist because there was not adequate documenta-
tion to support the claimed expenses. Norinder’s
motion was thus granted in part and denied in part:
Norinder asked for $170,000 and the court awarded
$150,570. Fuentes says that we should reduce that
award by “at least $75,000.” We review the district court’s
award for an abuse of discretion. Wickens v. Shell Oil Co.,
620 F.3d 747, 753 (7th Cir. 2010).
Fuentes objects in particular to four line items: first,
Norinder’s paralegal’s allocation of 52 hours at $125 per
hour for time at trial; second, Norinder’s decision to
present two Swedish attorneys as experts who could
explain the meaning of “rights of custody” under Swedish
law; third, the allegedly excessive number of hours
that Norinder’s attorney billed; and fourth, expenses
awarded to the Swedish interpreter who assisted
Norinder and his daughter Rebecca (from a prior mar-
riage) during the hearing. The short answer is that the
18 Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887
district court evaluated these arguments and made ad-
justments where appropriate. For example, it did reduce
the paralegal’s hours by 20%, knocking 40 hours of work
off of the bill. The court similarly did not abuse its dis-
cretion by permitting the expert testimony on Swedish
law, which was certainly pertinent to the case. Norinder’s
lawyer asked to be reimbursed for 195 hours, but the
district court cut this back to about 155, very close to the
130 that Fuentes thought was reasonable. In addition,
the district court rightly pointed out that many of the
hours expended at the start of the case, before the
petition was filed, were consumed in an effort to locate
JRN after he had been spirited off to southern Illinois by
Fuentes. As for the interpreter, the district court was in
the best position to judge whether those services would
be useful to Norinder and Rebecca. It found that they
were, and we see no abuse of discretion in that conclusion.
Finally, Fuentes argues that the fee award is so large
that it will make it impossible for her to conduct divorce
and custody proceedings in Sweden. At least two courts
of appeals have recognized that a fee award in a case
under the Convention might be excessive and an abuse
of discretion if it prevents the respondent-parent from
caring for the child. Whallon v. Lynn, 356 F.3d 138, 139
(1st Cir. 2004); Rydder v. Rydder, 49 F.3d 369, 373-74 (8th
Cir. 1995). The district court recognized these cases but
decided that, because Fuentes stood to make “in excess of
$300,000 a year” following her fellowship, the award of
$150,000 would not inflict that sort of harm. Fuentes
now tells us that her monthly income is just $3,300, and
is consumed almost entirely by expenses and debts. She
Nos. 10-2753 & 10-3887 19
does not provide any response, however, to the
contention that her salary will soon be much larger.
Indeed, Norinder stressed in his brief in this court what
the district court had said before: Fuentes herself has
said that she will make $300,000 a year. We cannot tell
whether this was an exaggeration on Fuentes’s part or
a realistic projection of her future salary. Tellingly,
Fuentes has not provided any sort of rebuttal to this
claim in this court, and her silence suggests that the fee
award is not a substantial problem. With nothing in the
record causing us to think that the award will have
a detrimental impact on JRN, we conclude that the
district court acted within its discretion when it awarded
costs and fees to Norinder.
A FFIRMED.
9-6-11