Lawsuit Against Private Child Welfare Providers and Individual Employees for Allowing Child’s Mental Health to Deteriorate
This lawsuit was filed in the Middle District of Florida against private child welfare providers and individual employees on behalf of the estate of a seventeen-year-old foster child who died while she was on runaway. The suit brought wrongful death and survival claims under state law causes of action and civil rights violations, alleging the defendants allowed the child’s mental health to deteriorate while in foster care and encouraged her to run away.
Plaintiff’s Complaint alleged the child’s death resulted from Defendants’ failure to assess her mental and emotional needs, provide her with a safe and appropriate placement designed to meet these needs, adequately supervise her, provide her with shelter, and Defendants’ active encouragement, assistance, and/or permission to run away from her foster care placement and/or Defendants’ offices. The fatal accident occurred within two weeks of the day the minor ran away. However, the underlying facts pled essentially are that Defendants placed an unstable minor on the street knowing that she was ill-equipped to care for herself and not caring what might become of her, while knowing of the many dangerous risks she faced on the streets with no support. These factual allegations provide sufficient support for Plaintiff’s allegations of deliberate indifference to the child’s well-being.
Although the exact mechanism of harm may not have been predictable, the totality of risk to the minor was significant and allegedly deliberately ignored. Defendants argue that there are no allegations that “Defendants had actual knowledge, or deliberately chose not to learn, that the decedent would be involved in a high-speed car chase between fighting non-party spouses.”
The case settled for an undisclosed amount.