Opinion ID: 2075762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Action Affecting H.R.'s Opportunity Interest

Text: I conclude, on this record, that H.R. has not abandoned his opportunity interest in developing a relationship with Baby Boy C. because state action unlawfully interfered with H.R.'s rights. Before explaining this conclusion, however, I outline the context. At the time the Barker Foundation and the O. family initiated adoption procedures, H.R. did not even know that his son had been born. L.C. had left Zaire, hinting that she would get an abortion and return to Africa within a couple of weeks. This intention was confirmed by a mutual acquaintance who told H.R. in July that L.C., in fact, had had an abortion in Washington, D.C. When H.R. received the letters from Barker in August 1983, postmarked in May, stating that L.C. has recently been working with our agency with a view to placing the child she expects in July, 1983 for adoption, H.R. had every reason to believe that an intervening abortion had mooted these plans. Nonetheless, he sought to learn what had happened and finally, in October 1983, learned that he was indeed the father of a child. Unfortunately for H.R., Barker had already placed Baby Boy C. with the O. family, eliminating any possibility for the development of custodial, financial, or emotional ties between himself and his son. The only way H.R. could have grasped his opportunity interest would have been to assert his legal rights to custody at a judicial proceeding. Again, unfortunately for H.R., neither L.C. nor Barker nor the court notified him that there was a pending judicial proceeding that vitally affected his legal rights to his son. Moreover, H.R.'s own efforts to identify the judicial proceeding proved fruitless. In sum, by cutting off the possibility of a current parent-child relationship, and then failing to inform H.R. for more than eighteen months of the legal proceeding which offered him his only means of ensuring a future relationship with his son, the District of Columbiaprimarily the Barker Foundation as a state actordeprived H.R. of any greater opportunity than he asserted to become a parent to his child. If the District's (including Barker's) actions were lawfulif the burden to learn the facts and the law were entirely on H.R.then presumably the failure to grasp his opportunity for custody of Baby Boy C. would have been his own responsibility. But, the reality is otherwise. State action violated H.R.'s procedural rights guaranteed by the due process clause of the Constitution and by the law of the District of Columbia. The trial court erred as a matter of law in holding otherwise. [25] As background for this conclusion, we should note that the Supreme Court has held the state may not deprive a person of a liberty or property interest without affording that individual notice and an opportunity to be heard. Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U.S. 306, 314, 70 S.Ct. 652, 657, 94 L.Ed. 865 (1950). This right to be heard has little reality or worth unless one is informed that the matter is pending and can choose for himself whether to appear or default, acquiesce or contest. Id. Moreover, a court assessing whether a litigant has been afforded a right to be heard must look to the realities of the case before it, Greene v. Lindsey, 456 U.S. 444, 451, 102 S.Ct. 1874, 1879, 72 L.Ed.2d 249 (1982), in assessing whether the opportunity to be heard has been granted, as the Constitution demands, at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner. Armstrong v. Manzo, 380 U.S. 545, 552, 85 S.Ct. 1187, 1191, 14 L.Ed.2d 62 (1965).