In Re Lee G.

Robert Wayne Gehring, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Minor.

OPINION

HUFFMAN, J.

At a contested review hearing involving Lee G., who had been a dependent child of the juvenile court for 18 months, the attorney for Lee's mother, Diane G., made an unnoticed oral motion to recuse the office of county counsel from representation of the petitioner in the dependency action, the department of social services (the Department). Since Diane was under an LPS conservatorship (Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, Welf. & Inst. Code, § 5000 et seq.)(LPS Act), [1] and since her public conservator was also represented by the office of county counsel, Diane's attorney argued that the office of county counsel was taking conflicting positions with regard to his client: for purposes of the conservatorship, county counsel argued Diane was incapable of entering into contracts on her own behalf; with respect to the dependency proceedings, county counsel sought a finding on whether Diane had adequately complied with her reunification plan in order to regain custody of Lee. Persuaded that these positions represented a conflict of interest and adverse representation toward Diane, the juvenile court…