Massachusetts Court Case: Adoption of Roni

ADOPTION OF RONI & another. n1 

n1 Adoption of Gail. The names are pseudonyms. 

No. 01-P-1780 

APPEALS COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS 

56 Mass. App. Ct. 52; 775 N.E.2d 419

June 3, 2002, Argued 

September 20, 2002, Decided 

Middlesex. Petition filed in the juvenile session of the Woburn Division of the District Court Department on October 27, 1997. The case was heard by Gail Garinger, J. 

Juvenile court's decrees were affirmed. 

COUNSEL:
R. Scott Miller, Jr., for the father.

Deborah Sirotkin Butler for the mother.

Richard S. Weitzel, Assistant Attorney General, for Department of Social Services.

Susan F. Drogin for the children. 

JUDGES:
Present: Brown, Cohen, & Green, JJ. 

OPINION:

GREEN, J. The parents of two sisters appeal from a decision of the Juvenile Court, adjudicating the sisters in need of care and protection, committing the sisters to the permanent custody of the department of social services, and terminating the parents' rights to consent to adoption. The father claims that the parents were denied due process by the trial judge's order excluding them from the courtroom during their daughters' testimony. n2 The mother claims that the parents were denied due process by the court's failure to hold a so-called seventy-two hour hearing, as directed by G. L. c. 119, § 24, within the statutorily prescribed time. n3 Both parents challenge the findings of fact entered by the trial judge and complain that the department furnished inadequate services in support of reunification before recommending the termination of their parental rights. We affirm the decision.

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n2 The mother adopts the father's argument.
n3 We decline to consider the mother's additional claim that the single justice of this court erred in refusing the parents' joint motion for additional time to supplement the record with the transcript of a portion of the trial missing from the assembled record or, alternatively, to vacate the assembly of the record. Neither parent filed an appeal from the order of the single justice, as required by Appeals Court Rule 2:02 (1975), thereby failing a necessary predicate for review. In any event, we detect no abuse of discretion in the order of the single justice (who previously had allowed several motions to enlarge the appellants' time to supplement the record).

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