County of Ventura v. County of Los Angeles

DRAPEAU, J. pro tem.* This opinion deals with appeals from orders of the juvenile court in Los Angeles County, transferring two juvenile court eases from that county to Ventura County. The appeals have been argued and submitted together. They involve but one question of law, and the facts are substantially the same in both cases. They have been, therefore, considered and disposed of together.

John Alexander and his half brother Sherman Lee Alexander have always lived in Los Angeles County. John was born July 17, 1940; Sherman was born May 7, 1943. The boys are illegitimate sons of unknown Negro fathers and a mother of Mexican descent.

The mother disappeared in 1946. In 1954 Los Angeles authorities found her receiving public support in Ventura County. She died in that county July 23, 1956.

Ventura County provided the mother with financial aid, through its Bureau of Public Assistance; Ventura County also paid for the support of the two boys in a foster home in Los Angeles County.

The boys were wards of the Los Angeles County juvenile court from March, 1949 to March, 1955, when that case was dismissed.

August 17, 1956, petitions were filed in the Los Angeles County juvenile court, alleging that the boys came within the provisions of section 700, subdivision (b), of the Welfare and Institutions Code, in that they had no parent or guardian exercising proper parental control, and that they needed such control.

The Los Angeles juvenile court found that the allegations of the petition were true, and further that the boys had been involved in perverted sexual practices.

The Los Angeles County juvenile court ordered these two cases transferred to Ventura County, because the mother had been for seven years a resident of that county, and the legal residence of the boys had been determined by the place of residence of the mother, notwithstanding their physical presence in Los Angeles County. Section 880 of the Welfare and [460]Institutions Code permits transfers of Juvenile Court cases ‘ [w] henever a petition is filed in the juvenile court of a county other than the residence of the person named in the petition.”

The Ventura County juvenile court accepted jurisdiction of the boys, subject to the outcome of this appeal, and they have since been taken care of in Ventura County.