Attorneys Will Argue That Law Was Misapplied

The legal arguments that enabled a former family friend to be recognized as 5-year-old Courtney Thomas’ father were misapplied in the case and led to results that “go against logic, the truth and the laws of nature,” attorneys for the girl’s mother, Catherine Thomas, plan to tell a judge Friday.

Kevin Thomas, who is not the girl’s biological father, was granted custody under legal premises designed to legitimize children born out of wedlock and extract child-support payments from deadbeat dads.

Under these premises, contained in a 1975 state law, a man can be declared the “presumed father” if he has taken a child into his home and acted as if it were his own, attorney Michael Goch said Tuesday.

But in the Thomas case, Goch continued, those legal premises became an inappropriate substitute for adoption proceedings. As a result, Goch said, his client and Courtney’s biological father lost parental rights and an unrelated man was declared the child’s legal father.

Goch and the criminal lawyers defending Catherine Thomas against a felony child-stealing charge--David Kestenbaum of Van Nuys and Michael Chaney of Los Angeles--will appear together in Los Angeles Superior Court Friday to ask Judge Martha Goldin to either change her decision or grant Thomas a new custody trial.

He said they also plan to reintroduce evidence that Courtney’s biological father, Leslie Henderson, wants a relationship with the child. Now a resident of Michigan, Henderson’s attempts to establish paternity this summer were dismissed by Goldin after he failed to appear in court. Goch said Henderson may not have been notified of the proceeding.