Supreme Court Summaries

Opinions filed April 3, 2008

Nos. 103620, 103639 cons. In re Leona W.

      Appellate citation: 367 Ill. App. 3d 844.

      JUSTICE KARMEIER delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.
Chief Justice Thomas and Justices Freeman, Fitzgerald, Kilbride, Garman, and Burke concurred in the judgment and opinion.

      The minor at issue in this Cook County case was born in 1996 to a mother who had been a cocaine user. At birth, the child tested positive for syphilis and suffered from mental deficits, a seizure disorder and asthma. The girl has lived with the same foster mother all her life, rather than with either of her natural parents. The foster mother has expressed a desire to adopt. In 2003, the parental rights of both biological parents were terminated, but only the father is at issue in ths appeal. The case has been before the appellate court twice, in both of which instances that court reached the same result, reversing the circuit court’s parental termination order for a technical defect in the lack of written findings as to abuse in 1997 and also holding that there had been error in excluding purported evidence, at the termination hearing, that the father had cared properly for other children by the same mother who were in his custody.

      In this decision, the Illinois Supreme Court found that the appellate court had not reached the proper result. The lack of a 1997 written finding as to abuse was not grounds for reversal where the facts at issue were otherwise contained in the record. In addition, the grounds on which the father’s rights had been termination in 2003, namely, failure to maintain a reasonable degree of interest in the child and failure to make reasonable efforts to correct the conditions that resulted in foster care or to make reasonable progress toward the child’s return to him were not related to the disputed evidentiary exclusion of matters concerning his care of the other siblings. In any event, this evidentiary exclusion was not prejudicial because the trial court was aware of these matters.

      The cause was remanded to the appellate court for it to reach the merits of the parent’s appeal, which it had not previously done.