In re Yassell B.

Syllabus

The petitioner, the Commissioner of Children and Families, filed a neglect petition and a motion for an order of temporary custody, alleging that the respondent mother had abused her minor child. The respondent father, B, who was divorced from the mother, was named as the father on the child's birth certificate, and the child was identified in the dissolution judgment rendered in New York as a child of the respondents' marriage. C claimed to be the child's father, and the commissioner filed a motion to adjudicate the paternity of the child. Although a previous paternity test had indicated a 99.99 percent probability that C was the child's father, the New York family court, which was not presented with the results of that test, dismissed an action C brought to establish his pater- nity of the child, thereby leaving in place the dissolution court's adjudica- tion that the child was a child of the respondents' marriage. The court here issued a ruling on the commissioner's motion to adjudicate pater- nity, concluding that the paternity determinations by the state of New York should be afforded full faith and credit and declining to disturb the New York findings that B was the child's father. The court also determined that C was not the child's legal father and dismissed C as a party to the neglect proceeding, after which the court adjudicated the child as abused and ordered a period of protective supervision. C thereafter appealed to this court. During the pendency of C's appeal, the underlying neglect proceeding was resolved, the child was returned to the mother and the period of protective supervision expired. Held that C's appeal was dismissed as moot, as there was no actual contro- versy from which the adjudication of the child's paternity would afford C any practical relief: the trial court addressed the issue of paternity only to determine which parties had cognizable interests at stake in the neglect proceeding, and, in light of the termination of that proceeding