Syson v. Rogers

SHEPARD, J.

This is an appeal by John D. Syson, father of three minor children, from orders of the Juvenile Court of San Diego County, dated January 12,1960, by which wardship of the juvenile court over said children, custody in the probation officer, and placement for immediate care in the home of the mother under the supervision of the probation officer, were all continued pending the further order of the court.

It appears that on July 2, 1959, the juvenile court made its judgments by which each of the children was made a ward of the juvenile court, under authority of paragraphs (b) and (d) of section 700, Welfare and Institutions Code, finding that said minors had no parent or guardian capable of or willing to exercise proper parental control and that the minors’ home was then an unfit place for said minors, and it appeared that the best interests of said minors would be served by adjudging them wards of the juvenile court. It, by said judgments, assumed wardship in the juvenile court, placed the custody of the children in the probation officer, and directed the probation officer to place them for care in the home of the mother under supervision of said probation officer. Said judgments were clearly sufficient. The fact that the court, in its

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findings, placed the primary blame on the mother is a mere descriptive detail and does not vitiate the force of the main findings, nor the judgments. It sufficiently complies with the purpose of section 739, Welfare and Institutions Code.

Appeal From Order After Judgment May Not Be Used to Obtain Review of Original Judgment

Welfare and Institutions Code, section 580, provides in part as follows:

“Appeal. A judgment or decree of a juvenile court assuming jurisdiction and declaring any person to be a ward of the juvenile court or a person free from the custody and control of his parents may be appealed from in the same manner as any final judgment, and any subsequent order may be appealed from as from an order after judgment; ...”

From the foregoing, it will be seen that special orders after the original judgments are appealable in their own right, and that the judgments were appealable within the time provided by law. The original judgments herein were made on July 2, 1959, and more than six months had passed before the hearing and orders of January 12, 1960, and no appeal was ever taken from said original judgments. The orders of January 12, 1960, are the only orders from which an appeal has been taken. Such an appeal may not be used as an excuse to review errors reviewable on appeal from the original judgments, such as sufficiency of the evidence to support the findings, or sufficiency of the findings to support the judgments.