In re D.H.

2011 Ohio 601
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedJanuary 25, 2011
Docket10CA2
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 2011 Ohio 601 (In re D.H.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re D.H., 2011 Ohio 601 (Ohio Ct. App. 2011).

Opinion

[Cite as In re D.H., 2011-Ohio-601.]

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT GALLIA COUNTY

In the Matter of: : Case No. 10CA2 : D.H. : : DECISION AND : JUDGMENT ENTRY

RELEASED 01/25/11 ______________________________________________________________________ APPEARANCES:

Robert W. Bright, STORY LAW OFFICE, Pomeroy, Ohio, for appellant R.L.T.

Jeff Adkins, GALLIA COUNTY PROSECUTOR, and Pat Story, GALLIA COUNTY ASSISTANT PROSECUTOR, Gallipolis, Ohio, for appellee Gallia County Children’s Services. ______________________________________________________________________ Harsha, P.J.

{¶1} R.L.T. (“Mother”) appeals the judgment of the Gallia County Court of

Common Pleas, Juvenile Division, entered on remand from this Court, on a dependency

complaint regarding her child D.H. In her first appeal, Mother argued that the juvenile

court erred when it dismissed the complaint without making certain findings. Under the

erroneous assumption that D.H. had been adjudicated a dependent child, we concluded

that the juvenile court could not dismiss the complaint unless it first found that the

problems that led Gallia County Children’s Services (“GCCS”) to file the complaint had

been resolved or sufficiently mitigated by a certain date.1 We remanded the matter and

instructed the juvenile court that “[i]f these problems had been resolved or mitigated, the

* * * court should journalize its findings in that regard and order the release of D.H. to

[Mother].” In re D.H., Gallia App. No. 09CA11, 2009-Ohio-6009, at ¶55. If the court

found that the problems were not resolved or sufficiently mitigated, we instructed the 1 We discuss the impact of this error in Section III of this opinion. Gallia App. No. 10CA2 2

court to make an “appropriate statutory disposition[,]” i.e. a R.C. 2151.353(A)

disposition. Id.

{¶2} Now Mother contends that the juvenile court failed to properly follow our

instructions. On remand, the court found that the problems that led GCCS to file the

complaint had been resolved or sufficiently mitigated, but then it merely noted that D.H.

“should have been returned” to Mother and purported to transfer “pending” issues to the

Monroe County Juvenile Court (which has also been exercising jurisdiction over the

child). However, the juvenile court should have dismissed the dependency complaint.

Then Mother would have regained custody of D.H. by operation of law for purposes of

the Gallia County proceedings. Thus, we reverse the juvenile court’s judgment and

remand so that the court can properly dismiss the case.

{¶3} Mother also claims that the juvenile court erred when it “de facto” denied

her various post-remand motions for custody. She essentially contends that the court

erred because it did not issue an order that explicitly ordered D.H. returned to her

custody. However, as we already explained, when the court issues a proper dismissal

entry on our second remand, Mother will regain custody of D.H. by operation of law.

{¶4} Next, Mother contends that the juvenile court erred when it “de facto”

denied a Civ.R. 60(A) and 60(B) motion she filed post-remand to contest an April 2007

judgment entry. Assuming Mother can rely on these Civil Rules in this juvenile court

proceeding, it is unclear from the record whether the complained of error in the entry

constitutes a clerical mistake subject to correction under Civ.R. 60(A). Moreover, even

if the entry constituted a “final judgment” for purposes of Civ.R. 60(B) and the court

could grant Mother relief from it after the first appeal, the court never ruled on the Gallia App. No. 10CA2 3

motion and lost jurisdiction to do so once Mother filed this appeal. Thus we have no

judgment to consider.

{¶5} Finally, Mother complains that the court erred when it “de facto” denied a

motion for reconsideration of and relief from the juvenile court’s judgment entered on

remand. Again, assuming the propriety of Mother’s reliance on the Civil Rules in this

instance, the “motion for reconsideration” is a nullity under those rules. Moreover, the

juvenile court did not rule on the Civ.R. 60(B) motion and lost jurisdiction to do so once

Mother filed this appeal. So again, there is no judgment on this issue for us to consider.

I. Facts

{¶6} Mother gave birth to D.H. on February 1, 2007. The next day, GCCS filed

a dependency complaint in the Gallia County Court of Common Pleas, Juvenile

Division, and the juvenile court granted GCCS an ex parte emergency temporary

custody order. At the next hearing on February 5, 2007, the court continued emergency

temporary custody with GCCS. Then the court set the matter for an adjudication

hearing on March 12, 2007.

{¶7} On that date, the juvenile court issued an entry titled “DISPOSITIONAL

HEARING.” The court checked a box on this form entry indicating that GCCS retained

temporary custody of D.H. However, the record provides no indication that an

adjudication hearing occurred before the court issued this entry and contains no entry in

which the court actually adjudicated D.H. as a dependent child. On April 10, 2007, the

court issued an entry that terminated GCCS’s custody and placed D.H. in the “[l]egal

[c]ustody” of his paternal grandparents, K.H. and G.H. Then on February 20, 2009, the

juvenile court dismissed the dependency complaint on the motion of Mother and the Gallia App. No. 10CA2 4

State. However, various orders of the Monroe County Juvenile Court have apparently

prevented Mother from regaining custody of D.H.

{¶8} Mother appealed the Gallia County Juvenile Court’s dismissal and its

rulings in various post-dismissal proceedings. We overruled most of her assignments of

error, but sustained her second and fourth assignments of error, which involved the

following issues:

In her second assignment of error, R.L.T. argues that the court erred in its February 20, 2009, journal entry of dismissal by failing to include a statement of the court’s determination that the “original problems that led to the filing of the complaint were resolved or sufficiently mitigated” by R.L.T. and by failing to order D.H.’s return to her. In a motion premised on Civ. R. 60(A), R.L.T. asked the court to correct its journal entry to insert that language, but the court denied this request. * * * In denying the request for that language, the juvenile court characterized similar language appearing in In [r]e Young Children * * *, 76 Ohio St.3d 632, 1996-Ohio-45, 669 N.E.2d 1140, as “extraneous” and unnecessary. In her fourth assignment of error, R.L.T. argues that this language is not “extraneous” and thus must be included in the dismissal.

In re D.H., supra, at ¶28.

{¶9} In analyzing these arguments, we assumed that the juvenile court had in

fact adjudicated D.H. as a dependent child prior to the dismissal. We also treated the

February 2, 2007 ex parte emergency temporary custody order as a post-adjudication

temporary custody order under R.C. 2151.353(A) for purposes of R.C. 2151.353(F).

See In re D.H. at ¶34. We explained that under R.C. 2151.353(F), the February 2, 2007

order terminated after one year, but the juvenile court still retained jurisdiction to make

an appropriate dispositional order. In re D.H. at ¶34.

{¶10} We further explained that once a juvenile court adjudicates a child as an

abused, neglected, or dependent child, R.C.

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