Opinion ID: 1309221
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the trial court's dismissal of the parental termination proceeding by waiver and relinquishment of jurisdiction constitutes an appealable order and may be reviewed as a public-law issue

Text: The trial court's waiver of jurisdiction in the then pending parental termination proceeding constitutes an appealable order. In the context of juvenile proceedings, waiver and relinquishment [3] of jurisdiction is a conceptual anachronism that descended into the storehouse of antiquarian procedural lore, when, in the wake of our 1969 constitutional court reform, juvenile judicature [4] ceased to exist as a separate cognizance, and all judicial jurisdictions exercisable in the counties under the state law came to be integrated in the new omni-competent, single-level district court. Because the trial court's waiver constitutes an end-of-the-line disposition of the parental termination case and must be regarded as the procedural analogue of a dismissal, it constitutes a final and appealable order. 12 O.S. 1981 §§ 952(b)(1) and 953. [5] Moreover, a public-law suit for termination of parental bond is dismissible only if good cause is shown. [6] The existence of that cause is reviewable on appeal. The appeal was timely. Failure of DHS to include the dismissal as a ground for new trial raises no barrier to our review of the dismissal order. A public-law controversy may be decided by an appellate court upon issues not raised either before it or below. [7] III.