Opinion
A168914
09-13-2024
In re A.C., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law. v. M.T., Defendant and Appellant. SAN FRANCISCO HUMAN SERVICES AGENCY, Plaintiff and Respondent,
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
San Francisco City & County Super. Ct. No. JD22-3278
We resolve this case by memorandum opinion. (Cal. Stds. Jud. Admin., § 8.1.) Undesignated statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions Code. We do not belabor the facts because our opinion is unpublished and the parties know, or should know, "the facts of the case and its procedural history." (People v. Garcia (2002) 97 Cal.App.4th 847, 851.)
DOUGLAS, J.[*]
M.T. (father) appeals from the juvenile court's jurisdictional findings concerning A.C. (child) under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300 and challenges a dispositional order purportedly removing child from father's physical custody under section 361, subdivision (c). However, the jurisdictional findings against child's mother (mother) have not been appealed by mother or preserved for appeal by father - a fact that is fatal to all of father's challenges to the jurisdictional findings. And because section 361, subdivision (c), is inapplicable to the circumstances here, no removal took place under that statute. For those reasons, we affirm.
As a preliminary matter, we grant the May 23 request for judicial notice filed by respondent San Francisco Human Services Agency (agency), father's July 2 request for judicial notice, and father's July 23 motion to admit postjudgment evidence for their collective relevance to the agency's argument that father's appeal is moot. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.252(a).) But having reviewed these filings, we decline to reach the question of whether the appeal is moot in its entirety; under the circumstances, we exercise our inherent discretion to hear the appeal. (See In re D.P. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 266, 285.) Still, as we explain below, certain claims within the appeal are rendered moot by our analysis.
Father contends no substantial evidence supports the following four bases of the juvenile court's finding of jurisdiction: (1) father's previous convictions for sex offenses and his Penal Code section 290 registration as a sex offender; (2) father and mother's substance abuse; (3) domestic violence; and (4) mother's mental illness. But because "the juvenile court assumes jurisdiction of the child, not the parents, jurisdiction may exist based on the conduct of one parent only. As a result, we need not consider jurisdictional findings based on the other parent's conduct." (In re A.R. (2014) 228 Cal.App.4th 1146, 1150.) Here, the juvenile court found true allegations B2 and B3 of the agency's amended juvenile dependency, dealing respectively with mother's substance abuse and mental illness. Not only has mother declined to appeal those findings, but at the jurisdictional hearing, father expressly "submit[ted] to the [juvenile] Court on allegations B-2 and B-3."
"In dependency proceedings, as elsewhere, a litigant forfeits an appellate argument by failing to raise it before the trial court." (In re D.P. (2023) 92 Cal.App.5th 1282, 1292.) Consequently, father has forfeited his claims concerning the sufficiency of the evidence for the jurisdictional findings based on mother's conduct. Because those claims have not been appealed by mother or preserved for appeal by father, jurisdiction exists based on mother's conduct alone. As a result, we need not address father's claims concerning the sufficiency of the evidence for the other jurisdictional findings. (In re A.R., supra, 228 Cal.App.4th at p. 1150.) In short, the foregoing analysis has rendered those claims moot.
In his reply, father urges us to reach a different conclusion. He argues that his claims on appeal are "not moot because (1) appellant has appealed an existing . . . three-year restraining order against him that was attached to the exit order in the related appeal in case no. A169881, (2) said restraining order relied on contested jurisdictional findings that . . . likely will carry forward into other proceedings and action, and (3) the court expressly used the contested jurisdictional findings to support dispositional findings that have been challenged on appeal." But the restraining order in case No. A169881 will be reviewed separately under the standards that govern such challenges. We find no indication in the record in that case that the restraining order was based on the jurisdictional findings contested here. And as we explain below, we reject father's claim concerning the dispositional order on the merits, for reasons unrelated to the contested jurisdictional findings.
Father argues no substantial evidence supported removal of the child from father's physical custody under section 361, subdivision (c), which requires "clear and convincing evidence" of at least one qualifying circumstance when a dependent child is "taken from the physical custody of his or her parents . . . with whom the child resides at the time the petition was initiated." At the time the petition was initiated, child resided not with father, but with mother at Cameo House, a residential treatment program. And the child was never removed from mother's custody. By its terms, then, section 361, subdivision (c), is inapplicable - a conclusion the juvenile court correctly reached at child's dispositional hearing. We therefore reject father's argument that no substantial evidence supports the findings required by that statute.
DISPOSITION
We affirm.
We concur: BROWN, P. J. STREETER, J.
[*] Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa, assigned by the Chief Justice pursuant to article VI, section 6 of the California Constitution.