[REVIEW GRANTED] In re Jerry P. (2002)

In re JERRY P., a Person Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.

LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. J. R., Defendant and Appellant.

[Modification fn. * of opinion (95 Cal.App.4th 793).]

THE COURT. fn. †

It is ordered that the opinion filed herein on January 28, 2002, be modified as follows:

Add the following footnote at the end of the last sentence on page 29 [95 Cal. App. 4th 817, fn. 87]:

After we filed this opinion DCFS requested us to dismiss the appeal as moot. While the appeal was pending the trial court issued an order terminating parental rights. DCFS maintains this order is now final, no appeal having been taken, and there is no relief we can afford J.R. at this stage of the proceedings. (Cf. In re Jessica K. (2000) 79 Cal. App. 4th 1313.) We do not know why J.R. did not seek to stay proceedings in the trial court or appeal the termination order. We do know determinations of presumed fatherhood are common in dependency proceedings yet, as the procedural history of this case shows, capable of evading review. Furthermore, the public policy behind uniting families and giving a child a father even if he is not the biological father make this case a case of great public importance. We also note DCFS did not raise the mootness issue until after it lost the appeal. In its request for dismissal DCFS is cagey about when it learned of the termination order, saying only it was "recently informed" of the order. For these reasons we will not dismiss the appeal as moot.

Johnson, Acting P.J., Perluss, J. FN *. This modification requires the movement of text affecting pages 817-818 of the bound volume report.

FN †. Before Johnson, Acting P. J., and Perluss, J.