Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. Superior Court

In this writ proceeding we are asked to order the Los Angeles Dependency Court to appoint lawyers from the Los Angeles County Counsel’s office to represent all children involved in dependency proceedings except in instances of “actual conflict of interest” between the county and the child. We conclude under existing statutory law the decision whether to appoint the county counsel to provide “dual representation” to both the county and to the child in the same case rather than appointing an “independent counsel” for the child is a matter within the court’s discretion. We further conclude the Los Angeles Dependency Court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a policy (now a local rale) formalizing the ongoing practice of appointing independent counsel for children in nearly all proceedings before that court. Accordingly, we discharge the alternative writ and deny the petition for writ of mandate and prohibition.

Facts and Proceedings Below

In mid-June 1996 Shawn B.’s mother abandoned her four-year-old at the home of a seventy-nine-year-old woman. A friend of the elderly woman stopped by and asked about the child. The woman did not even know the mother’s last name and it…