Court Opinion

ID: 9839689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-13 19:04:11.593321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:25.156702
License: Public Domain

Filed 9/13/23 In re M.F. CA2/8
   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                         SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                      DIVISION EIGHT

In re M.F. et al., Persons Coming                                 B322440
Under the Juvenile Court Law.
                                                                  Los Angeles County
LOS ANGELES COUNTY                                                Super. Ct. No. 22CCJP01258A-B
DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN
AND FAMILY SERVICES,
         Plaintiff and Respondent,
         v.
MARVIN F.,
        Defendant and Appellant.

      APPEAL from orders of the Superior Court of Los Angeles
County. Tara Newman, Judge. Affirmed.
      Benjamin Ekenes, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
      Dawyn R. Harrison, County Counsel, Kim Nemoy,
Assistant County Counsel, and Kelly G. Emling, Deputy County
Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
                     _______________________
       The juvenile court sustained jurisdictional allegations that
Marvin F., the father of two teenaged boys, M.F. and A.F., had a
history of substance abuse, was a daily abuser of alcohol and
marijuana, and had mental and emotional problems rendering
him incapable of providing regular care of the children. The
court removed the boys from father’s custody and placed
restrictions on his visitation. The children remained in their
mother’s custody.
       Father challenges the court’s jurisdictional findings and
dispositional orders, contending the findings were not supported
by substantial evidence. We disagree and affirm.
                          BACKGROUND
       The family came to the attention of the Los Angeles County
Department of Children and Family Services (Department) on
February 21, 2022, when father started a fire on the stove in the
kitchen of the family’s home, resulting in father’s arrest on an
arson charge. According to the police report, father was outside
when the fire department arrived, yelled that he did it, got on a
bicycle and crashed into a concrete light post, and was restrained
by fire personnel at whom he shouted obscenities and who could
smell alcohol on his breath. No one was injured in the incident;
the children were not in the home when the fire started, but were
outside in the car waiting for mother to return from the house
with the dogs.
       After an investigation, the children were detained from
father and remained with mother. The Department made four
allegations under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300,
subdivision (b). (Further statutory references are to that Code.)
Two of them were not sustained: an allegation that father
endangered the children by setting their home on fire, and an

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allegation both parents endangered the boys because marijuana
and a drug pipe were found in the home within reach of the
children.
      On June 27, 2022, the court found two other allegations to
be true. One of them alleged father had a history of substance
abuse and was a daily abuser of alcohol and marijuana, rendering
him incapable of providing regular care of the children. The
allegation continues: “On 02/21/2022 [the day of the fire] and on
prior occasions, the father was under the influence of alcohol and
marijuana while the children were in the father’s care and
supervision.” The mother knew of father’s substance abuse but
allowed him to reside in the home and have unlimited access to
the children. “The father is a registered controlled substance
offender. The father has a criminal history of convictions for
possession of a narcotic controlled substance and a misdemeanor
for DUI alcohol drugs; possession of paraphernalia; possession of
a controlled substance; DUI alcohol drugs; for unlawful
paraphernalia; DUI alcohol .08% and possession of a narcotic
controlled substance. The father’s substance abuse and the
mother’s failure to protect the children endangers the children’s
physical health and safety and places the children at risk of
serious physical harm, damage and failure to protect.”
      The court also found true an allegation that father “has
mental and emotional problems including a traumatic brain
injury, goes into rages and screams and yells at the minors. Due
to the father’s limitations and volatile and hostile behavior, the
father is unable to provide regular care for the children. Such
mental and emotional condition on the part of the father
endangers the children’s physical health and safety and places
the children at risk of physical harm, damage and danger.”

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       The court removed the boys from father’s custody and
placed them with mother under the Department’s supervision.
The court ordered monitored visitation for father, three times a
week for three hours, and unmonitored phone calls.
       Father filed a timely appeal from the court’s jurisdictional
and dispositional orders.
                            DISCUSSION
       During the pendency of this appeal, the juvenile court
terminated jurisdiction over the boys, awarding sole legal and
physical custody to mother, and ordering three-hour unmonitored
visits for father three times a week. We grant father’s request
that we take judicial notice of these orders, which also included a
provision that before the orders can be modified, father must
comply with a full drug and alcohol program, psychological and
psychiatric assessment, and take all prescribed medication.
       Father points out his appeal is not moot, and the
Department does not suggest otherwise. (In re D.P. (2023)
14 Cal.5th 266, 283; id. at pp. 277-278 [merits review is required
“where a jurisdictional finding affects parental custody rights
[citation], curtails a parent’s contact with his or her child
[citation], or ‘has resulted in [dispositional] orders which continue
to adversely affect’ a parent”].)
       Our responsibility on review of a jurisdictional order is to
determine if substantial evidence, contradicted or uncontradicted,
supports the findings. (In re Natalie A. (2015) 243 Cal.App.4th
178, 184.) We review the evidence in the light most favorable to
the juvenile court’s order, drawing every reasonable inference
and resolving all conflicts in favor of the prevailing party. (In re
Misako R. (1991) 2 Cal.App.4th 538, 545.)

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       Father first contends there was no substantial evidence the
teenaged boys were at risk of suffering “serious physical harm”
due to father’s substance abuse (§ 300, subd. (b)(1)(D)). Father
does not contend there was insufficient evidence of alcohol abuse,
but asserts there was no evidence the boys “were not being
adequately cared for because of father’s substance use.” (Italics
added.) Father says “merely being under the influence of
marijuana and/or alcohol while caring for a 16-year-old and a 14-
year-old is, without more, insufficient to support the assertion of
dependency jurisdiction.” For this principle, father cites In re
J.A. (2020) 47 Cal.App.5th 1036, 1046, a case involving a
mother’s prenatal use of edible marijuana. The case is factually
inapt, and in any event there was “more” here than merely being
“under the influence.”
       There was evidence from mother that father “has ‘always’
smoked marijuana,” and both boys have seen him do so. The boys
did not see father’s marijuana use as a problem, but “disclosed
that when father consumes alcohol, he becomes loud, yells, and
rages.” The younger boy, A.F., said he “doesn’t like it when
father drinks and is yelling and tries to calm him down,” and
father’s yelling “makes him scared.” He said that when father
“screams and yells at them to do things,” they “normally leave”
and go to a relative’s house. M.F., the older boy, said that “father
becomes angry when he drinks, that father yells and that father
drinks alcohol several times a week,” and when he does so, “he
yells and gets angry.” Indeed, on the day of the fire, mother left
the house with the children because father had been drinking
and “got very upset.” (Mother returned a few minutes later to get
the dogs, leaving the boys waiting in the car, when she smelled
the smoke from the stove.) Mother told the social worker that

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“[w]hen [father] came out of jail, he knew he could not come back
here. I’m not going to risk my kids just to help him.”
       In short, and contrary to father’s claim, the evidence
supports a reasonable inference that the boys were at risk of
serious physical harm from father’s poor judgment while his
alcohol abuse issues remained unresolved. “A parent’s ‘ “[p]ast
conduct may be probative of current conditions” if there is reason
to believe that the conduct will continue.’ ” (In re Christopher R.
(2014) 225 Cal.App.4th 1210, 1216.)
       In his reply brief, father asserts we cannot infer the
children were at risk based on father’s poor judgment relating to
the fire incident, because the allegation that father endangered
the children by setting their home on fire was not sustained.
Father’s assertion is mistaken. The fire incident is the reason
the children came to the attention of the Department, and the
juvenile court found, in the sustained count, that on the date of
the fire and on prior occasions, father was under the influence of
alcohol and marijuana while the children were in his care. We
need not pretend the fire did not occur and father did not start it.
The court merely found that the children were not endangered
because they were not in the home at the time.
       Father also challenges the second basis for jurisdiction,
contending there was insufficient evidence of mental illness
rendering him incapable of providing care for the minors (§ 300,
subd. (b)(1)(D)).
       Mother and the boys all stated that father had suffered a
traumatic brain injury over a year earlier. M.F. said that father
“has not been the same since and that his rages, yelling and
‘snapping’ has increased since having the brain injury.” Father

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“yells and screams at them a lot, but . . . they ‘block him out’ and
stay in their bedroom” playing video games.
       Mother stated that father also yelled prior to his brain
injury. “Before he yelled and left and that was it. This time, he
yells and continues to yell, and does not stop. He won’t leave, so
this time (the day of the fire) I realized that he’ll stay here until
he calms down and we’ll go.” Mother said father cannot control
some of his emotions, and sometimes he cannot speak; he just
screams.
       Father argues that “screaming and yelling per se does not
place a teenage minor at risk of serious physical harm.” He also
points out that harm to the child “cannot be presumed from the
mere fact of mental illness of the parent.” (In re Jamie M. (1982)
134 Cal.App.3d 530, 540.) While those principles are correct,
here again there is more than the “mere fact” of a traumatic
brain injury; it is the consequences to the children of the
resulting conduct. If either father or children have to leave the
home to avoid the screaming episodes, then father is not in a
position “to provide regular care” for the boys during those times,
and could put teenaged boys at a substantial risk of suffering
serious physical harm.
       In the end, however, we need not decide this point. “When
a dependency petition alleges multiple grounds for its assertion
that a minor comes within the dependency court’s jurisdiction, a
reviewing court can affirm the juvenile court’s finding of
jurisdiction over the minor if any one of the statutory bases for
jurisdiction that are enumerated in the petition is supported by
substantial evidence. In such a case, the reviewing court need
not consider whether any or all of the other alleged statutory

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grounds for jurisdiction are supported by the evidence.” (In re
Alexis E. (2009) 171 Cal.App.4th 438, 451.)
                          DISPOSITION
      The juvenile court’s jurisdictional findings of a substantial
risk the children would suffer serious physical harm as a result of
father’s substance abuse, and its dispositional orders removing
them from father’s custody, are affirmed.

                              GRIMES, J.

      WE CONCUR:

                        STRATTON, P. J.

                        VIRAMONTES, J.

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