RICARDO v. SUPERIORCOURTOFLOS  ANGELES  COUNTY

Filed 2/1/07

CERTIFIED FOR PARTIAL PUBLICATION^*

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION ONE

            ORIGINAL PROCEEDING; petition for extraordinary writ.  Writ denied.

            Emma Castro for Petitioner.

            No appearance for Respondent.

            Raymond G. Fortner, Jr., County Counsel, Larry Cory, Assistant County  Counsel, and Judith A. Luby, Deputy County Counsel for Real Party in Interest.

            Children's Law Center of Los Angeles and Martha Matthews for Minor A. V.

            Ricardo V. (father), father of dependent daughter A. V., petitions for extraordinary writ review of orders setting a permanency planning hearing, terminating reunification services, and granting a Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) petition requesting that father's custody, pending the rehearing of a referee's order granting custody to father, be modified to allow monitored visits only.  (Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 366.22, 366.26, and 388;^[1] Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.452 former rule 38.1 (hereafter Rule).)  We deny the writ.

            In the published portion of the opinion, we conclude that a referee's order is not automatically vacated when a party's request for rehearing before a judge is granted.  Pursuant to section 250, that order remains in force until a new order is made after rehearing of the original order or pursuant to other procedures authorizing the court to modify an existing order.

            In the unpublished portion of the opinion, we hold that if any error resulted from the dependency court's alternate reading of section 250, such error was harmless, that at any rate father failed to preserve this issue by not raising it in the trial court, and that substantial evidence supported the trial court's orders.

FACTS

            A. V., born in September 1999, is the daughter of father and Rachel D. (mother), who is not a party to this proceeding.  On January 6, 2005, DCFS detained A. V. from mother and father (parents) after a domestic violence incident on January 2, 2005 in which father allegedly threw mother against a wall in A. V.'s presence.  In the section 300 petition, filed January 11, 2005, DCFS claimed parents had a history of engaging in such incidents.  In the accompanying detention report, DCFS noted that A. V. currently was and long had been living with her paternal great aunt Pat, Pat's domestic partner Tai, and their two-year-old daughter.  For eight months, Pat and Tai (caregivers) had been taking A. V. to therapy for anger and depression arising from A. V.'s worries about her parents' unstable, volatile relationship.  A. V.'s therapist reported that the recent domestic violence incident had left A. V. â€