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Filed 1/11/23 In re T.G. CA1/5

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not 

certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been 

certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115. 

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION FIVE

In re T.G, a Person Coming Under 

the Juvenile Court Law.

MARIN COUNTY HEALTH &

HUMAN SERVICES AGENCY,

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.

L.G.,

Defendant and Appellant.

 A164680

 (Marin County Superior Ct.

 No. JV27156A)

Appellant L.G. appeals from a juvenile court order placing his son, 

T.G., in a short-term residential group home instead of appellant’s own care.

Under Welfare and Institutions Code1 section 361.2, subdivision (a), 

appellant argues that no substantial evidence supports the court’s 

determination that placing T.G. with appellant would be detrimental to the 

child’s well-being. We disagree and affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Respondent Marin County Health and Human Services filed a juvenile 

dependency petition for T.G. on October 28, 2021. At the time, the 

1 All subsequent references to statute are to the Welfare and 

Institutions Code, unless otherwise noted.
2

10-year-old lived with mother N.S. and for about nine months had been in

weekly contact with his father, appellant. In the course of the investigation 

underlying the petition, police and social workers discovered extensive 

evidence that T.G. had suffered from his mother’s neglect. He had not been 

enrolled in school, had recently run away from home and slept outside 

overnight, and had set fires in the apartment complex where he then resided. 

When police responded to mother’s home to investigate the fires, they 

found the apartment “filthy.” The refrigerator held moldy and expired food, 

and dirt or rodent droppings were visible on the floor. Respondent also 

learned that T.G. had not been taken to a doctor in years and had never seen 

a dentist. As a result of the latter, T.G. had 

“ ‘a very large black cavity in a rear upper tooth, with part of that tooth 

broken off.’ ” As well, “ ‘two other teeth [had] cavities in them,’ ” something 

which could “be easily seen by just looking in his mouth.” According to 

mother, appellant had purchased glasses for T.G. to correct his blurred 

vision, but those had gone missing more than a year earlier and were never 

replaced. The dependency petition noted appellant’s admission that “he was 

concerned about [T.G.’s] well[-]being in [mother’s] care but [had] failed to 

seek legal custody or take other actions to ensure [T.G.’s] basic needs were 

met.” 

T.G. was placed in a confidential Marin County licensed resource home. 

Although he was “visibly comfortable in the home and with the resource 

parent,” T.G.’s stay at the resource home was not without incident. On one 

occasion, when the resource parent set limits on T.G.’s behavior, T.G. “got 

upset and appeared to have a tantrum by yelling, throwing [a] video game 

controller at the resource parent, stomping on the floor, running to his room 

and slamming the door.” The resource parent reported that T.G. 
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“inappropriately hits or punches others”—including classmates and the 

resource parent—“even when asked not to” do so. Finally, T.G. would not 

“bathe properly, . . . brush his teeth, . . . flush the toilet,” or refrain from 

urinating on the floor. In short, he “require[d] 100% attention . . . at home 

and . . . at school.” 

Consequently, T.G. was placed in a short-term residential therapeutic 

program (STRTP) at St. Vincent’s School for Boys. There, T.G. would be in 

the care of professionals charged with addressing his childhood development 

trauma, undergo psychological evaluation, and have his educational needs 

assessed. In a virtual visit with his mother, T.G. “appeared ‘happy and 

excited,’ showing [her] where [the school’s] horses were and saying that he 

liked St. Vincent’s.” However, T.G. also experienced further behavioral 

problems, including incidents where he “[b]anged his head” on his bedroom 

wall and had to be “escorted to the sensory room.” 

After a contested disposition hearing featuring testimony from 

appellant and the social worker assigned to T.G., the juvenile court 

determined that removing T.G. from St. Vincent’s and placing him with 

appellant would be detrimental to T.G. under section 361.2, subdivision (a). 

That determination was based on several factors: appellant’s “failure to 

protect” T.G. from his mother’s neglect; T.G.’s “profound needs” and 

appellant’s apparent failure to acknowledge those; appellant’s “extensive 

history involving substance abuse,” including “at least five DUIs”; his refusal 

to take a drug test when asked to do so by the social worker; his similar 

refusal to take parenting classes; and a generally evasive, uncooperative 
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posture adopted by appellant with respect to the social worker and the 

juvenile court.2

Arguing that the juvenile court’s order was unsupported by substantial 

evidence, appellant filed this appeal. 

II. DISCUSSION

Where a child has been removed from a parent’s custody under section 

361 and another, non-custodial parent requests custody, section 361.2, 

subdivision (a), requires the juvenile court to place the child with the latter 

parent, unless the juvenile court finds that such a placement “would be 

detrimental to the safety, protection, or physical or emotional well-being of 

the child.” In determining whether such a detriment would result, the

juvenile court must “weigh all relevant factors to determine if the child will 

suffer net harm.” (In re Luke M. (2003) 107 Cal.App.4th 1412, 1425 (Luke 

M.).) “Only clear and convincing evidence can establish the necessary 

detriment.” (In re A.C. (2020) 54 Cal.App.5th 38, 43.)

“Our role is limited because our review of the juvenile court’s detriment 

finding is deferential.” (In re A.C., supra, 54 Cal.App.5th at p. 43.) “We 

review the record in the light most favorable to the court’s order to determine 

whether there is substantial evidence from which a reasonable trier of fact 

2 An illustrative example of this posture concerns appellant’s residence. 

Initially, he told the social worker that he had “an ‘apartment’ that he 

lease[d].” Later, when he provided his address to the juvenile court, the court 

noted that the address was to a yacht harbor and appellant confirmed that he 

lived on a boat. Appellant subsequently testified that he has an 

“arrangement” with a friend who owns the boat: Appellant pays the dock fee 

and maintains the boat and in turn, can stay there “as long as necessary.” 

That arrangement appears to be an informal one; when the social worker 

asked appellant to show her a rental agreement or permit her to speak to the 

harbormaster, appellant refused. 
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could find clear and convincing evidence that the children would suffer such 

detriment.” (Luke M., supra, 107 Cal.App.4th at p. 1426.)

Here, the trial court’s determination that it would be detrimental to 

place T.G. in appellant’s custody is supported by the following evidence. 

First, as appellant’s counsel conceded, appellant “failed to protect [T.G.] from 

[T.G.’s] mother” in the years when T.G. suffered from her neglect. Second, 

appellant has a history of substance abuse, including five convictions for 

driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Third, appellant was to a 

great degree uncooperative with the social workers assigned to 

T.G.—refusing to be tested for drug use, to attend parenting classes,3 and to 

produce a rental agreement or grant permission for the social worker to 

discuss appellant’s living situation with the harbormaster where appellant 

lives on a friend’s houseboat.4

Fourth, T.G. has several serious behavioral problems that might pose a 

significant challenge to any father. When staying with a resource parent, 

T.G. threw tantrums—throwing a video game controller at the resource 

parent, stomping on the floor, running to his room, and slamming the door. 

He refused to wash or brush his hair, brush his teeth, or flush the toilet, and 

he would urinate on the floor. Similar behavior continued after T.G. was 

placed at St. Vincent’s. When a social worker asked appellant how he might 

deal with such challenges, appellant seemed to minimize them, saying that 

3 Appellant testified that in 2010 at the Salvation Army, he underwent 

a six-month drug treatment program which included parenting classes. We 

note that he suffered yet another DUI conviction in 2018, and that the 

parenting classes did not prevent appellant’s failures with respect to T.G., 

who was born in 2010. 

4 We reject appellant’s framing of this evidence, which suggests that his 

“[p]overty” was found to be “a sufficient basis to deny” him custody. The 

salient fact here is not appellant’s living situation, but his lack of candor.
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T.G. “would never do that with me.” The record, however, indicates 

otherwise. For example, while T.G. was living with his mother in 2021, he 

avoided spending a planned weekend with his father by running away and 

sleeping in the rain behind his mother’s apartment building. 

In sum, appellant failed to intervene when T.G. endured mistreatment

in his mother’s custody, he abused controlled substances, and he refused to 

attend the parenting classes or undergo the drug testing reasonably called for 

by that history. He has also been uncooperative in other ways with social 

services personnel attending to the welfare of his child. Crucially, appellant 

seemed to minimize the scale and gravity of T.G.’s ongoing problems. Taken 

together, these facts constitute substantial evidence showing that to place

T.G. with appellant “would be detrimental to the safety, protection, or 

physical or emotional well-being of the child.” (§ 361.2, subd. (a).)

In arguing against that conclusion, appellant relies on several cases, all 

of which are distinguishable. In re Patrick S. (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th 1254, 

1263 (Patrick S.), for example, dealt with a father who had “no criminal 

history, no referrals to child welfare services and no indication of substance 

abuse or mental illness”—something that cannot be said of appellant.5 The 

evidence of detriment in In re John M. (2006) 141 Cal.App.4th 1564, 1570, 

was not substantial because it was limited to the child’s “need for services, 

his lack of a relationship with [the father], and the paucity of information 

5 In Patrick S., the Fourth District concluded that “there [was] not 

substantial evidence to show that Patrick could not meet [his son’s] 

therapeutic needs” immediately after it discussed father’s paternal 

qualifications, including the ones we have highlighted here. (Patrick S., 

supra, 218 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1263–1264.) Thus, when appellant suggests

that the record here displays a comparable lack of “substantial evidence that 

the child’s short[-]term needs could not be addressed,” he ignores the very 

different factual context upon which the holding in Patrick S. was based. In 

short, Patrick S. is distinguishable.
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about” the father; here, on the other hand, there is an abundance of 

information about appellant and his apparent unwillingness to cooperate 

with his son’s social workers. Similarly, the evidence of a father’s drug 

problem in In re C.M. (2014) 232 Cal.App.4th 1394, 1403–1404, was an 

unsubstantiated allegation made by a mother whose “mental health issues 

made her a questionable reporter on the issue.” Here, such evidence appears 

in DUI convictions as recent as 2018—well after appellant’s 2010 

participation in a Salvation Army drug treatment program—along with 

appellant’s resistance to drug testing.

Nor are we persuaded by appellant’s other arguments. For example, 

there is evidence that T.G. wishes to live with appellant, but although 

relevant, such “wishes are not dispositive.” (In re A.C. (2020) 54 Cal.App.5th 

38, 43.) Appellant further argues that “the record reflects” his attempt “to do 

what he could within the limitations imposed on him given mother’s 

resistance and his lack of presumed father status.” At most, this argument 

presents a rival interpretation of the evidence, of little help to us in our 

endeavor to “consider the record most favorably to the juvenile court’s order, 

and affirm the order if supported by substantial evidence even if other 

evidence supports a contrary conclusion.” (In re Liam L. (2015) 240 

Cal.App.4th 1068, 1087.)

Finally, we emphasize that our conclusion does not rest on any single

line of evidence set forth above, but instead, on the whole of that evidence. 

As the juvenile court observed, “[m]any of the cases” dealing with section 

361.2 “say, well, you can’t [find detriment] for this reason or . . . for that 

reason. I’m not doing it for any one of those reasons . . . . I am doing it based 

on the totality.” In reviewing that totality, we find that it meets the 

“substantial evidence” standard operative here. 
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III. DISPOSITION

We affirm.
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_________________________

Wiseman, J. *

We concur:

_________________________

Jackson, P.J.

_________________________

Simons, J.

In re T.G. / A164680

* Retired Associate Justice of the Court of Appeal, Fifth Appellate 

District, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the 

California Constitution.