Department of Human Services v. M. M.

370 P.3d 878, 277 Or. App. 120, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 354
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedMarch 23, 2016
Docket1400192; Petition Number 14JU215; A159382
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 370 P.3d 878 (Department of Human Services v. M. M.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Department of Human Services v. M. M., 370 P.3d 878, 277 Or. App. 120, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 354 (Or. Ct. App. 2016).

Opinion

TOOKEY, J.

In this juvenile dependency case, both parents appeal from a judgment of the juvenile court that took jurisdiction over their infant son, B, on the grounds that mother has a substance abuse problem that impairs her ability to safely parent the child and father has a substance abuse problem and mental health issues that impair his ability to safely parent the child. Mother also challenges the disposi-tional judgment in the case. We reject without discussion mother’s first two assignments of error, which relate to the jurisdictional judgment. Father contends that the evidence in the record was insufficient to allow the juvenile court to determine that his substance abuse and mental health issues existed and posed a present risk of serious loss or injury to B that was likely to be realized if B were placed in father’s care. For the reasons that follow, we agree and, accordingly, reverse the jurisdictional judgment. That reversal also requires reversal of the dispositional judgment.

On review of a jurisdictional determination, where, as here, we do not review de novo, we “(1) assume the correctness of the juvenile court’s explicit findings of historical fact if those findings are supported by any evidence in the record” and “(2) further assume that, if the juvenile court did not explicitly resolve a disputed issue of material fact and it could have reached the disposition that it reached only if it resolved that issue in one way, the court implicitly resolved the issue consistently with that disposition.” Dept. of Human Services v. N. P., 257 Or App 633, 639-40, 307 P3d 444 (2013). Ultimately, we “assess whether the combination of (1) and (2), along with nonspeculative inferences, was legally sufficient to permit the trial court to determine” that the standard for jurisdiction was satisfied. Id. at 640.

A juvenile court has jurisdiction over a child under ORS 419B.100(1)(c), when the child’s “condition or circumstances are such as to endanger the welfare of the [child].” That requires that the child’s condition and circumstances “‘give rise to a current threat of serious loss or injury to the child,”’ Dept. of Human Services v. D. H., 269 Or App 863, 866, 346 P3d 527 (2015) (quoting Dept. of Human Services [123]*123v. G. J. R., 254 Or App 436, 443, 295 P3d 672 (2013)), that is reasonably likely to be realized, Dept. of Human Services v. D. M., 248 Or App 683, 686, 275 P3d 971 (2012). The Department of Human Services (DHS) must prove “that there is a current risk of harm and not simply that the child’s welfare was endangered at some point in the past.” State v. S. T. S., 236 Or App 646, 654, 238 P3d 53 (2010) (emphasis in original).

The evidence in the record was presented by DHS, mother, and father during a 10-day jurisdictional trial that took place over the course of five months, between December 2014 and April 2015. The main issue at trial was an allegation in the petition that father presented a risk to B because he had sexually abused one of his stepdaughters (one of mother’s daughters) during the year before B’s birth. The juvenile court ultimately found that DHS had not proved that sexual abuse had taken place; accordingly, it did not take jurisdiction on that ground. However, as noted, the court found that DHS had proved that father’s parenting posed the requisite risk to B based on the substance abuse and mental health grounds alleged in the petition.

A detailed discussion of the voluminous evidence presented—which pertained mostly to the alleged sexual abuse—would not benefit the bench, the bar, or the public. Accordingly, we confine our discussion of the facts and the juvenile court’s findings to those necessary to explain our conclusion that the evidence on which the juvenile court relied in taking jurisdiction over B was deficient for two reasons: First, it was out of date—it concerned circumstances that existed approximately a year before the trial and entry of judgment, and those circumstances had changed substantially in the intervening time—and second, the undisputed fact that father had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was not tied to any risk of harm to B.

Father’s substance abuse problem presents unusual facts. It was undisputed at trial that father is opposed to drug and alcohol use and does not use substances other than pain medication that is prescribed to him for pain that he suffers from injuries he sustained during military service. Mother, on the other hand, has a longstanding substance abuse [124]*124problem. During parents’ relationship, mother used a wide variety of drugs and obtained them, as she described it, “all over the place.” Father knew of some of mother’s drug use, but he did not know that she used methamphetamine. The juvenile court found that father “was willing to give [mother] his prescription drugs as a way to deal with [mother’s] illicit drug use.” However, the court also found that father never actually “gave [mother] his prescription drugs to use.” DHS argued, and the juvenile court agreed, that father’s willingness to share drugs with mother was drug abuse and that it presented a risk to B because mother’s drug use made mother unavailable to parent.

The court also found that father abused drugs by misusing his prescribed pain medication in an attempt to commit suicide in February 2014, shortly after his stepdaughter alleged that he had sexually abused her. (We discuss the suicide attempt in more detail below.) That presented a risk to B, the court found, because, if father were to attempt suicide again, he would be unavailable to care for B.

The parties argued, and the juvenile court found, that those substance abuse grounds for jurisdiction were intertwined with the mental health grounds, which, as discussed below, included father’s codependent relationship with mother (the cause of his willingness to share his prescriptions with her) and his suicide attempt (which encompassed his one-time misuse of his prescription drugs). Under these circumstances, we consider all of the allegations together to decide whether DHS proved that father’s problems, whether characterized as mental health or substance abuse problems, posed a current risk of serious loss or injury to B likely to be realized if B were in father’s care.

A significant part of the evidence relating to father’s problems concerned father’s relationship with mother. Specifically, the juvenile court found that father’s codependency contributed to his risk of suicide—around the time of his suicide attempt in February 2014, father stated that he could not live without mother, and he again threatened suicide when she ended their relationship in May 2014—and, as noted above, the court also found that his willingness [125]*125to share his prescriptions with mother posed a risk to B by making mother unavailable to parent. However, it was undisputed that, by the time the jurisdictional judgment was entered, parents had been separated for almost a year and mother was in a relationship with, and living with, someone else. Thus, risks arising from parents’ codependent relationship were no longer current by the time of trial or the jurisdictional judgment. Parents’ past codependent relationship, if it were paired with evidence of father’s involvement in other codependent relationships, might contribute to a determination that father had a pattern of engaging in those types of relationships or threatening or attempting suicide because of those relationships.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
370 P.3d 878, 277 Or. App. 120, 2016 Ore. App. LEXIS 354, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/department-of-human-services-v-m-m-orctapp-2016.