Motion to terminate an ex parte PPO; MCL 600.2950(1) & (4); Showing of a likelihood of immediate & irreparable injury, loss or damage required by MCL 600.2950(12); “Stalking” (MCL 750.411h(1)(e)); “Harassment” (MCL 750.411h(1)(d)); Procedural due process; Principle that the court presiding over the PPO action should be familiar with other actions affecting the parties; MCR 3.703(D)(1); Questioning by the trial court; MRE 614

The court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion either in granting petitioner’s ex parte petition for a PPO or in denying respondent’s motion to terminate the PPO. Respondent is the father of petitioner’s two children. The court noted that the trial court “judge presiding over the PPO action” also presided over the parties’ child custody proceedings. The petition included allegations “that respondent stalked petitioner by tracking her son’s cell phone, which she discovered” in 1/23 when the child “came to her, very upset, saying his father was demanding to know where” they were. Petitioner “looked at her son’s phone and ‘the location was on,’ and it indicated that respondent’s business was looking for the location of the child’s phone. The petition alleged further stalking by respondent during petitioner’s parenting time on [11/10/23], when he was seen standing in the park across the street from the school of one of the children, watching petitioner’s partner pick the child up from school. Petitioner further indicated that she moved . . . to get away from respondent and that, on [12/28/23], her children informed her that [he] had been coming up to the area, which petitioner perceived to be respondent stalking her. Further, the petition alleged that, just four days later, . . . petitioner and her partner were harassed by respondent, during an exchange of the children at” a police department, “when he stared them down and began taking pictures of their vehicle and its license plate.” The petition also alleged that a week later, “respondent, who lived over an hour away from petitioner, was stalking her by sending her a message on a parenting app stating that he was in” an area close to her new home. She alleged that he “had never come to that area before [she] moved there, and petitioner likewise believed this to be an act of stalking.” The court concluded that while it may be “that none of these allegations, considered separately, would satisfy the requirement for issuance of an ex parte PPO pursuant to MCL 600.2950(12), taken as a whole, a series of incidents were alleged to have occurred between [1/23] and [2/24], which support a finding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it found that it clearly appeared from those facts that immediate and irreparable injury, loss, or damage would result from the delay required to effectuate notice or that notice itself would precipitate adverse action before a PPO could issue.” Affirmed.