Brown

We have met these litigants before. In a relentless struggle for custody of his daughter S., now seven years old, John L. Brown has forum-shopped his way through three continents. In California alone, he and the child’s mother, Shelley Ann Brown, have invoked the jurisdiction of the state and federal courts at the trial and appellate levels. Their intransigent hostilities harmed their daughter, specifically by prolonging her stay in the dependency system, with its attendant uncertainties.

This time around, John challenges the family law court’s order granting Shelley’s motion to dismiss John’s order to show cause for change of custody and visitation rights. Finding the appeal wholly without merit, we affirm.

I

John and Shelley met in 1986, when John, a peripatetic Australian-born international entrepreneur, was in California on business. Shelley accompanied him to Vienna, where the couple took up residence, marrying in July 1987. In 1991, when they separated, Shelley was pregnant. She returned to California, giving birth to S. in January 1992.

Three weeks later, mother and daughter rejoined John in Vienna, but the husband/wife relationship remained…