Opinion ID: 2075762
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Failure to Use Due Diligence to Find H.R.

Text: H.R.'s final contention concerning deprivation of his procedural rights, with which I also concur, is that Barker violated his constitutional right to procedural due process by failing to use due diligence to find H.R. in order to provide timely service of the required immediate, official notice of the adoption proceedings. According to H.R., the delay engendered by Barker's lack of diligence caused him to be unable to assert his legal rights early enough to prevail at the custody hearing. Mullane established the fundamental principles for determining the constitutional sufficiency of notice for due process purposes: An elementary and fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding which is to be accorded finality is notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections. The notice must be of such nature as reasonably to convey the required information....       [P]rocess which is a mere gesture is not due process. The means employed must be such as one desirous of actually informing the absentee might reasonably adopt to accomplish it. 339 U.S. at 314-15, 70 S.Ct. at 657 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Mullane's requirement that the means employed reflect an actual desire to inform the absent party of the proceedings applies not only to the form of service chosen but also to the efforts to ensure that such service is effective. This court has held that violations of the Superior Court rules which provide for notice and opportunity to be heard have the effect of denying a litigant due process of law. Evans v. Evans, 441 A.2d 979, 980 (D.C.1982). In Bearstop v. Bearstop, 377 A.2d 405, 408 (D.C.1977), this court described the kind of information which plaintiffs, unable to achieve personal service of process in a divorce proceeding, should provide the court before the court allows notice by publication pursuant to the Domestic Relations Rules: (1) the time and place at which the parties last resided together as spouses; (2) the last time the parties were in contact with each other; (3) the name and address of the last employer of the defendant either during the time the parties resided together or at a later time if known to the plaintiff; (4) the names and addresses of those relatives known to be close to the defendant; and (5) any other information which could furnish a fruitful basis for further inquiry by one truly bent on leaning the present whereabouts of the defendant. We held that the plaintiff, using this basic information, should detail for the Family Division the particular efforts which had been made to ascertain the defendant's address. Id. As Judge Schwelb said in his January 25, 1984, denial of petitioner's petition for an interlocutory order of adoption in this case, the rights of the father here in question are certainly not less significant than those at issue in Bearstop.  See also Matter of E.S.N., 446 A.2d 16, 17-18 (D.C. 1982) (requirements of due diligence met in proceeding to terminate parental rights where appellant had not been heard of for six years and no record of his residence existed, social worker contacted appellant's brother and aunt and hired an investigator, and [a]ll possible leads were explored and affidavits regarding these efforts were presented in court and made part of the record). Accordingly, the efforts to locate H.R. at a minimum had to incorporate the due diligence required in Bearstop. Barker's efforts did not approach the standard of diligence required to satisfy due process. Barker assumed a casual attitude toward ascertaining H.R.'s whereabouts. Avery's testimony indicates that Barker did not obtain the addresses of H.R.'s relatives because L.C. wanted to keep the entire matter as confidential as possible. In Barker's crucial December 1984 report to the court, Avery wrote that L.C. did not know H.R.'s whereabouts; but Avery admitted on deposition that she did not tell the court that L.C. had other possible addresses for H.R. See Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma v. Rader, 822 F.2d 1493, 1499-1500 (10th Cir.1987) (due process rights of natural father violated when state human services agency did not make diligent efforts to provide him with personal service: (1) social worker did not press mother of child for father's address or ask her if she had communicated with him; (2) social worker knew of father's relatives but did not attempt to gain information concerning his whereabouts from them, nor did he inform court that relatives could be located). Avery also admitted that her statement that L.C. did not know H.R.'s address was based on an August conversation she had had with L.C. four months before the submission of the December report. Indeed, at deposition, Avery admitted that she had been relying on old information and had not made an attempt to update it, despite the fact that L.C. had told Avery that the university address would not be good after July 1983. See In re Marriage of McDaniel, 54 Or.App. 288, 294, 634 P.2d 822, 825 (1981) (no due diligence in locating father in custody dispute where, among other things, affidavit of mother failed to indicate when her inquiries concerning father's whereabouts occurred `so as to show that they were made recently enough that a diligent person would be justified in relying upon them at the time of application for an order authorizing service ... by publication'). In January 1984, Judge Schwelb explicitly told Barker that an Order to Show Cause directed to H.R.'s last known address, without further reasonable inquiry into his present whereabouts, would not be sufficient. Yet, in August 1984, Judge Mencher was only in a position to issue an Order to Show Cause to an old address, one in Zaire, which Barker had obtained seven months earlier. More specifically, at the time of the August 1984 Order to Show Cause, Barker knew or should have known that H.R. was no longer in Zaire. In H.R.'s January 17, 1984 phone conversation with Barker, he had mentioned that he was planning to go to Canada or France in the spring and that he hoped to come to the District of Columbia to see the baby. In May 1984, Barker had received correspondence from L.C. indicating that H.R. in fact was in Paris. And yet, three months later, rather than calling L.C. to ascertain H.R.'s Paris address, Barker instead allowed the court to mail the show cause order to an address which H.R. had given Barker seven months earlier. H.R. never received the August 1984 Order, and in October 1984 an interlocutory decree of adoption was entered for petitioners, Mr. and Mrs. O. In February 1985, after H.R. retained an attorney, Barker received a letter from H.R. in which he stated he refused to consent to the adoption. That letter contained H.R.'s Paris address, which then became the basis for all further communication with him. Also in February, H.R. wrote another letter to Barker stating that he had retained a lawyer and had formally admitted paternity. H.R. asked Barker to inform the court that he did not intend to abandon his child. Barker never answered either of these letters. The only notification H.R. ever received from anyone informing him of the adoption proceeding was an order from Judge Riley issued in April 1985, more than one year after Barker's February 1984 letterand at a time when his son was already twenty months oldextending the interlocutory decree of adoption to June 30, 1985, and informing H.R. that he must file pleadings and appear at a hearing on that date. [32] I reject the trial court's assertion (as well as Judge Belson's assertion, see post at p. 1202, n. 11) that H.R. had the responsibility to keep the parties, in this case Barker, informed of his current address if he wished to have prompt notice of the legal proceeding. There was no indication whatsoever in any of the information Barker sent to H.R. that there was a pending judicial proceeding, let alone that Barker and H.R. were parties to that proceeding. More specifically, Barker never informed H.R. that there was an adoption petition pending in a court of law and that H.R., pursuant to District of Columbia law, was entitled to notice of and participation in a hearing on that petition. Perhaps we could attribute some legal significance to H.R.'s failure to keep Barker informed of his whereabouts ifbut only ifBarker had informed H.R. that it needed to be updated on his changes of address because it was serving as an investigator for a court that would be sending H.R. notice of a hearing in which Barker would be challenging H.R.'s rights to custody of his son. As it was, H.R. only knew that the Barker Foundation was seeking his consent to the adoption of his childconsent which he was unwilling to give.