Termination under § 19b(3)(j); Judicial notice of a separate personal protection order (PPO)

The court held that the trial court in this termination proceeding “did not commit a ‘clear or obvious’ error” in taking judicial notice of a separate PPO case between respondent-mother and the child’s father. Further, as to the termination of her parental rights under § (j), the court found no factual or legal support for her claim “that she posed no possible harm to” the child. Thus, it affirmed the trial court’s order terminating her parental rights. The child’s father was not a respondent in the case, which began about a month after the mother’s “home was raided by a police drug taskforce” and police “confiscated a dangerous butane-based THC extraction lab from her garage.” The child was placed in his father’s care “in an ex parte custody order entered in a custody case between the” parents. The father was also granted a PPO against the mother. “The same judge presided over this case, the custody case, and the PPO proceeding.” On appeal, the court found that it was “permissible for the trial court to take judicial notice in this case of the files from the other PPO matters over which the same trial judge presided. Furthermore, much of the substance of what happened in the other PPO matters was placed on the record in this case.” In addition, “the trial court emphasized that ‘the PPO hearing demonstrated that she clearly violated [it]s order’ and that [her] conduct was ‘a very blatant violation of [its] order’ and not ‘a grey area.’” Further, the record did not show that it terminated her “parental rights on the basis of facts established by an inadequate evidentiary standard.” The court also noted the trial court indicated that her “conduct in the PPO proceeding was merely part of why it believed she could not be relied on to obey [its] orders. The trial court voluminously recounted evidence in the present case showing that [she] was untrustworthy.” The court found that she could not “show that the trial court’s consideration of the PPO files had any effect on the outcome of the proceeding.” As to § (j), the court concluded the “trial court appropriately found no reason to believe that [the] mother would not continue bringing drugs or dangerous individuals into her home, thereby exposing” the child to more harm.