Court Opinion

ID: 9881748
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-03 20:18:11.525438+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:14:23.304574
License: Public Domain

Filed 10/3/23 In re Desiree O. CA2/2
   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

                         SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                        DIVISION TWO

In re Desiree O. et al., Persons                              B319202
Coming Under the Juvenile                                     (Los Angeles County
Court Law.                                                    Super. Ct. No.
                                                              21CCJP05423A-F)

LOS ANGELES COUNTY
DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN
AND FAMILY SERVICES,

         Plaintiff and Respondent,

         v.

ELIZABETH A. et al.,

     Defendants and
Appellants.

     APPEALS from findings of the Superior Court of
Los Angeles County. Rudolph A. Diaz, Judge. Dismissed.
      Donna Balderston Kaiser, under appointment by the Court
of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant Elizabeth A.

     Christopher R. Booth, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant Daniel G.

      Dawyn R. Harrison, County Counsel, Kim Nemoy,
Assistant County Counsel, and Aileen Wong, Deputy County
Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
                        _________________________

       Appellants Elizabeth A. (mother) and Daniel G. (father)
appeal from the juvenile court’s jurisdictional findings regarding
their two shared children, Daniel G. ,Jr., (Daniel Jr., born Apr.
2016) and Destiny G. (Destiny, born Jan. 2019); mother also
challenges the jurisdictional findings made as to her four older
children, Desiree O. (born Dec. 2007), Andrew O. (born Jan.
2009), Dre.O. (born Feb. 2012), and Michael O. (born Sept. 2013).1
Five months after the parents filed this appeal, the juvenile court
terminated jurisdiction and returned the children to parental
custody. Accordingly, we dismiss mother and father’s appeals as
moot.
       FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
       As of October 2021, mother and father were separated. All
six children resided with mother. A family law order allowed
father unmonitored weekend visitation with Daniel Jr. and
Destiny.
       In June 2021, the Los Angeles County Department of
Children and Family Services (DCFS) received a referral alleging
that when father went to mother’s home to pick up Daniel Jr. and
Destiny for a routine visit, he raped mother. Four months later,

1     The older children’s father is not a party to this appeal.

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DCFS received a second referral alleging that father had
violently argued with mother in front of the children. On one
occasion, father tried to prevent mother from leaving in the
middle of a fight by purposefully driving his car into her car,
while two-year-old Destiny was in the backseat.
       In November 2021, DCFS filed a petition under section 300
of the Welfare and Institutions Code2 alleging, among other
things, that father’s “violent conduct . . . endangers the children’s
physical health and safety” and that mother “failed to protect the
children by allowing . . . father to reside in the [family] home and
have unlimited access to the children.”
       In March 2022, the juvenile court sustained the allegations
against father. After determining that mother was a
nonoffending parent, the juvenile court struck the failure to
protect allegation from the petition, which was amended by
interlineation. The children were returned to parental custody.
       Mother and father timely appealed.
       In August 2022, the juvenile court terminated jurisdiction
over all six children. It returned the four older children to
mother’s sole legal and physical custody, and returned mother
and father’s two shared children to their joint custody pursuant
to the prior family law order.3
                            DISCUSSION
       DCFS asks us to dismiss the parents’ appeals as moot.
After considering all parties’ briefs, we grant the motion to
dismiss.

2     All further statutory references are to the Welfare and
Institutions Code unless otherwise indicated.
3     We previously granted mother’s request to take judicial
notice of these exit orders.

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       “As a general rule, appellate courts decide only actual
controversies. Thus, ‘it has been said that an action which
originally was based upon a justiciable controversy cannot be
maintained on appeal if the questions raised therein have become
moot by subsequent acts or events.’ [Citation.]” (In re
Christina A. (2001) 91 Cal.App.4th 1153, 1158.)
       “A case becomes moot when events ‘“render[ ] it impossible
for [a] court, if it should decide the case in favor of plaintiff, to
grant him any effect[ive] relief.”’ [Citation.]” (In re D.P. (2023)
14 Cal.5th 266, 276.) “As a general rule, an order terminating
juvenile court jurisdiction renders an appeal from a previous
order in the dependency proceedings moot.” (In re C.C. (2009)
172 Cal.App.4th 1481, 1488; see In re N.S. (2016)
245 Cal.App.4th 53, 60 [“[T]he critical factor in considering
whether a dependency appeal is moot is whether the appellate
court can provide any effective relief if it finds reversible error”].)
       The juvenile court’s order terminating jurisdiction
withdrew DCFS’s supervision of the family and any further court
involvement and returned all children to parental custody, with
mother having sole custody of her four older children and father
and mother retaining joint legal and physical custody of their two
shared children. Because there is no further relief we could grant
mother or father in this appeal from the juvenile court’s
jurisdictional findings, the appeal is moot and subject to
dismissal.
       Mother and father raise two counterarguments against
dismissal. First, both parents argue that the appeal is not moot.
Father argues that the appeal is not moot because the “adverse
[jurisdictional] findings and orders” will subject him to “intense
prejudice in any subsequent family law or dependency
proceedings, and pretty much throughout the rest of his life in
general.” Father’s argument is misguided; as our Supreme Court

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recently noted, “speculative future harm” is not “sufficient to
avoid mootness.” (In re D.P., supra, 14 Cal.5th at p. 278.)
       Mother argues that the appeal is not moot because this
court can grant her effective relief by correcting a prejudicial
error in the record. She contends that, despite the juvenile
court’s finding that she was a nonoffending parent, the sustained
petition still contains language “stigmatizing” mother as a
participant in fights with father. We disagree. The juvenile
court struck from the petition all language accusing mother of
failing to protect the children from father’s violent conduct. All
that remains is the factual statement that father and mother
“have a history of engaging in violent physical and verbal
altercations[.]” This statement, without more, does not indicate
that mother was the aggressor in these fights, much less that she
was an offending parent. Accordingly, there is no error for us to
correct; mother’s appeal remains moot.
       Second, mother and father urge us to exercise our
discretion to hear their appeal if we conclude that it is moot. We
recognize that, “[e]ven when a case is moot, courts may exercise
their ‘inherent discretion’ to reach the merits of the dispute.
[Citation.]” (In re D.P., supra, 14 Cal.5th at p. 282.) In
determining whether to exercise that discretion, we may
consider, among other things, “whether the challenged
jurisdictional finding ‘“could be prejudicial to the appellant or
could potentially impact the current or future dependency
proceedings,’ or ‘“could have other consequences for [the
appellant], beyond jurisdiction[,]”’” as well as “whether the
jurisdictional finding is based on particularly pernicious or
stigmatizing conduct[.]” (Id. at pp. 285–286.)
       Both parents argue that the adverse jurisdictional findings
could be used against them in future dependency proceedings;
father also argues that the findings could subject him to

                                5
registration in the Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) pursuant to
the Child Abuse and Neglect and Reporting Act (CANRA) (Pen.
Code, § 11164 et seq.), which would “negatively impact father’s
ability to participate in his children’s extracurricular school
activities or athletic endeavors, and . . . father’s employment and
opportunities.”
       These arguments are flawed for a number of reasons.
Mother ignores that there were no adverse jurisdictional findings
against her; the juvenile court found that she was a nonoffending
parent, and the children were kept in her home for the duration
of these proceedings. Mother does not explain how this record
could be used against her going forward.
       While adverse jurisdictional findings were made against
father, his arguments are similarly flawed. The possible future
consequences father identifies in connection with the CACI and
future family law proceedings are highly speculative and generic.
Nothing in the record suggests that father has been or will be
included in the CACI. And father’s argument that he is subject
to CACI registration is sparse and unpersuasive; father does not
even argue that the conduct underlying the challenged
allegations would be reportable under the CANRA. (Cahill v.
San Diego Gas & Electric Co. (2011) 194 Cal.App.4th 939, 956
[“‘We are not bound to develop appellants’ arguments for
them. . . .’”])
       As to the potential for consequences in possible future
dependency proceedings, we note that father’s children were
returned to his custody just six months after the juvenile court
made the challenged jurisdictional findings. The quick and
positive resolution of this case mitigates the potential negative
consequences of the initial jurisdictional findings made against
father.

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       Lastly, both parents argue that the jurisdictional findings
made against them are so pernicious and stigmatizing as to merit
discretionary review. Again, mother ignores that there were no
adverse jurisdictional findings made against her. As to father,
while we agree that the jurisdictional finding arising from his
rape of mother is rooted in “particularly pernicious or
stigmatizing conduct” (In re D.P., supra, 14 Cal.5th at p. 285),
father does not challenge the most heinous aspect of that finding
on appeal. Rather, father concedes that he “must accept the
juvenile court’s true finding that the sexual assault happened[,]”
arguing only that the rape did not endanger the children
sufficiently to warrant jurisdiction. Accordingly, even if we
reached the merits of father’s appeal, we could not strike from
the record the juvenile court’s determination that father raped
mother in the family home; this stigmatizing finding will remain
in the record, and thus will follow father in future proceedings,
regardless of whether we exercise our discretion to hear this moot
appeal.

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                       DISPOSITION
     The appeals are dismissed.
     NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS.

                               _____________________, J.
                               ASHMANN-GERST

We concur:

________________________, P. J.
LUI

________________________, J.
CHAVEZ

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