The Effect of Tort Law on Child Welfare Liability
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Description
This paper will discuss trends in the area of tort claims brought in connection with acts arising out of child protection cases or investigations. There are several different contexts in which individuals such as social workers, police officers, medical health personnel and teachers, child care agencies or local governmental entities may be held responsible for torts committed in their official line of duty of child protection. The four principal categories of cases are as follows: First, parents or aggrieved parties sometimes sue when individuals have made false or erroneous reports of suspected child abuse to child protection officials. Second, individuals or agencies may be held responsible for failing to protect a child who needed protection. In these cases, the defendant is charged with committing an act of negligence by omission. The theory of these cases is that the defendant knew or should have known that the child was at risk, and that the failure to remove the child from a. dangerous situation was the proximate cause for the injuries which someone else inflicted upon the child. Sometimes, these cases are the inverse of category One cases. Officials are sued for failing to make a report when a statute requires them to do so or for failing to accept a report or act upon it after it was made. Third, officials may be held responsible for invading a family's privacy, conducting a wrongful investigation, commencing charges of neglect against a family or wrongfully removing a child from his or her parent's custody. In these cases, the defendant is charged with negligence or tortious interference with the parent-child relationship. Fourth, officials may be held responsible for injuries which occur to children once they have been removed from their parents' custody. In these cases, the defendant is charged with directly causing the injury or indirectly being responsible for an injury by failing to supervise adequately the child's placement. Many of these cases involve children who are placed in foster care in a foster parent's home or a residential facility and the child is injured in some fashion during the placement. This paper will address recent litigation in this area in the country. We begin with a look at the federal cases both because they form an important backdrop against which state cases may be explored and because it is easier, because of the uniformity of federal law, to provide a clearer national overview.
Source Publication
Liability in Child Welfare and Protection Work: Risk Management Strategies
Source Editors/Authors
Marcia Sprague, Robert M. Horowitz
Publication Date
1991
Recommended Citation
Guggenheim, Martin, "The Effect of Tort Law on Child Welfare Liability" (1991). Faculty Chapters. 1272.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/1272
