Opinion
B308962
09-15-2021
In re SERENE H., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. v. CARLOS H., Defendant and Appellant. LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES, Plaintiff and Respondent,
Patricia K. Saucier, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Rodrigo A. Castro-Silva, County Counsel, Kim Nemoy, Assistant County Counsel, and Navid Nakhjavani, Principal Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL from orders of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, No. 17LJJP00199C, Robin R. Kesler, Juvenile Court Referee.
Patricia K. Saucier, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Rodrigo A. Castro-Silva, County Counsel, Kim Nemoy, Assistant County Counsel, and Navid Nakhjavani, Principal Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
WILEY, J.
The father of a 15-year-old girl (Father) challenges jurisdictional findings, a removal order, and one component of his case plan. The Department opposes him on the first two issues but offers no argument on the third. Father's jurisdictional challenge is nonjusticiable, however, and he has forfeited his removal argument. We strike the challenged component of his case plan. Statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code.
I
In November 2019, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services filed a section 300 petition on behalf of the teenager and her half siblings after learning of a domestic violence incident between the children's mother (who we call Mother) and her male companion.
The Department later located Father and amended its petition to include allegations against him. Among other things, the petition alleged Father failed to take prescribed psychotropic medication and endangered the teenager through his extensive history of substance abuse and mental and emotional problems.
This appeal concerns only the teenager and Father. In light of the disposition, we provide an abridged background focusing on them.
During most of the Department's investigation, Father was incarcerated for a probation violation. Father has an extensive criminal history, including numerous drug- and alcohol-related convictions.
Father also has a history with the juvenile court. In 2010, he faced similar substance abuse and mental health allegations, which the court sustained. Since then, Father repeatedly failed to reunite with the teenager. When the current dependency case began, Father had neither physical nor legal custody of her. He was also fighting the adoption of his other child.
Father made efforts to speak with the teenager while the case was pending. Sometimes these calls irritated or upset her, but Father could not gauge his effect on the girl. During this time, she struggled considerably in her placements, first at her grandmother's home and then at two short-term residential programs. Both the teenager and Mother were put on multiple psychiatric holds while the case was pending.
The Department recommended no reunification services for Father due to his history of dependency cases, his failure to address past case issues, his lack of insight into them, his failure to reunite with his daughter despite reunification services, his continuous criminal violations, and his status as a noncustodial parent.
Father testified at both the August 2020 adjudication hearing and the November 2020 disposition hearing. His testimony covered aspects of his criminal record and mental health, his past substance use, and his efforts to maintain his sobriety and to complete court-ordered services. Father neither asked for custody of the teenager nor argued against removal.
The court sustained the substance abuse and mental health allegations against Father, as well as numerous allegations against Mother. As to all parents (including the half siblings' father), the court found by clear and convincing evidence that returning the children to their custody would endanger the children, and that no reasonable means existed to protect the children without removing them from the parents' care. The hearing transcript specifies section 361, subdivision (c) as the basis for the court's ruling; however, the minute order also refers to subdivision (d).
Over the Department's and the teenager's objections, the court ordered family reunification services for Father. Father's counsel objected to the inclusion of a 52-week domestic violence course in the case plan.
Mother did not appeal. Father did.
II
Father challenges some of the juvenile court's jurisdictional findings, the court's removal order, and the domestic violence course requirement. As explained below, we decline to address the first two issues but find the third has merit and modify the case plan accordingly.
A
An appellate court need not address jurisdictional findings involving one parent when there are unchallenged findings involving the other parent. (In re Briana V. (2015) 236 Cal.App.4th 297, 308-310 (Briana V.).) We generally view such challenges as nonjusticiable. (Id. at p. 308; see generally In re I.A. (2011) 201 Cal.App.4th 1484, 1489-1495.)
Nevertheless, a court may choose to address the merits of the jurisdictional challenge where the findings serve as the basis for challenged dispositional orders, could be prejudicial to the parent, could impact current or future dependency proceedings, or could have other consequences to the parent beyond jurisdiction. (Briana V., supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at p. 309.)
Father contests the jurisdictional findings concerning him. He argues we should address these findings because they serve as the basis for challenged dispositional orders.
It is true Father attacks two disposition orders: the juvenile court's removal order and the order to participate in a domestic violence program. These attacks do not persuade us to exercise our discretion here.
First, as we discuss below, Father forfeited his challenge to removal. Removing the teenager from Father apparently was never an issue until this appeal.
Second, the lone aspect of the case plan Father attacks does not relate to any challenged jurisdictional finding; in other words, the findings that concerned Father did not concern domestic violence. (See In re D.M. (2015) 242 Cal.App.4th 634, 639 [jurisdictional finding that mother intentionally inflicted serious physical harm was prejudicial where it served as the basis for two of three case plan requirements].) Even absent a sustained jurisdictional finding involving him, Father could be subject to a court-ordered case plan and could attack the case plan requirements. (Briana V., supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at p. 311.)
We therefore decline to exercise our discretion to hear Father's jurisdictional challenge. (See Briana V., supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at pp. 309-310 [following the general rule of declining to hear a jurisdictional dispute that does not affect the child's status as a dependent, where there were multiple jurisdictional findings against the father].)
B
We similarly decline to review Father's challenge to the removal order, as Father forfeited this challenge.
Where a litigant fails to object to a ruling in the trial court, we ordinarily do not consider an appellate challenge to the ruling. (In re S.B. (2004) 32 Cal.4th 1287, 1293, superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in In re S.J. (2008) 167 Cal.App.4th 953, 962.) We exercise our discretion to excuse forfeiture rarely, and only in cases presenting an important legal issue. (S.B., at p. 1293.)
At no point did Father's counsel argue against removal of the teenager. Indeed, his counsel made no argument or objection at all regarding the girl's placement. In contrast, counsel did object to the case plan.
Further, Father began this case without legal or physical custody of the teenager; and though he testified twice, neither he nor his lawyer told the juvenile court he wanted custody of her. Even on appeal, Father never says he wants custody. His present concern regarding removal thus appears to be entirely academic.
Father argues there was no forfeiture because his appeal raises only a legal issue-the propriety of removing a child from a parent with no custodial rights under section 361, subdivision (c). Father concedes this is a matter committed to our discretion. His concession is correct, as his citations demonstrate. (See, e.g., In re Anthony Q. (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 336, 345 [“when the appeal involves an important and purely legal issue subject to our independent review, as it does here, we have discretion to entertain the challenge to the juvenile court's order notwithstanding the parent's failure to object on that basis in the juvenile court”].)
Father has offered no compelling reason for us to review his belated removal challenge.
C
Finally, Father argues the juvenile court abused its discretion in ordering him to complete a 52-week domestic violence course as part of his case plan. Father's counsel preserved this objection.
The Department takes no position on the issue, noting it opposed providing reunification services to Father.
We review for abuse of discretion. (Briana V., supra, 236 Cal.App.4th at p. 311.) While reunification services need not be tied to a sustained allegation, they must be reasonable, and they must be designed to eliminate the conditions that led to the dependency. (Ibid; In re Nolan W. (2009) 45 Cal.4th 1217, 1229.)
The order to complete a 52-week domestic violence program-in addition to completing a drug and alcohol treatment program, a 12-step program, weekly drug testing, a fatherhood class, individual counseling, and a psychiatric evaluation-fails this test.
The extensive record in this case has scattered references to domestic violence on the part of Father: he testified he completed a domestic violence program as a condition of his probation. And one of the Department's reports shows 2011 and 2012 convictions for inflicting corporal injury on a spouse/cohabitant, among many other convictions. But these issues did not lead to this dependency or to the teenager's removal from Father.
We order the juvenile court to strike this requirement of Father's case plan.
DISPOSITION
We dismiss Father's appeal as to jurisdiction. We direct the juvenile court to strike the domestic violence program requirement from Father's case plan. We otherwise affirm.
We concur: GRIMES, Acting P.J., OHTA, J. [*]
[*] Judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.