Ricardo V. v. Superior Court

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 *421 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, & 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In the unpublished portion of the opinion, we hold that if any error resulted from the dependency court’s alternate reading of section 250, such error was harmless, that at any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…