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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
A Multnomah County jury recently found the state Department of Human Services liable for the catastrophic brain injury of a 2-year-old after failing to investigate a call made to the Child Abuse Hotline.
The jury awarded the child’s family $29.2 million, but because of a statutory limit on liability claims against the state, that figure will likely be knocked down to $4.2 million.
Scott Kocher, a Portland lawyer who represented the boy in court, says the revised award may still sound large but is a fraction of the medical bills the boy has already incurred—a sum Kocher pegs at $12.5 million.
The boy’s mother took him to a Mount Hood emergency room in 2017 with suboxone poisoning (suboxone is a controlled substance used to treat opioid addiction). A social worker there saw issues with the mother’s story and called the Child Abuse Hotline, the lawsuit said.
Staff at the hotline, run by DHS, were required to take steps during the phone call to obtain information about possible abuse and investigate the situation. Case documents suggest staff did nothing.
If the agency had investigated, Kocher told the court, staffers would have found the mother was in the midst of a custody battle with boy’s father and in a relationship with a man who had a history of child abuse.
As a result, the child went back home with his mother. Nine days later, he was taken to the hospital with severe injuries and hypothermia.
“DHS needs accountability to keep children safe. They got a call to the child abuse hotline, and they did nothing,” a representative of the family said. “We hope more than anything that the jury’s message gets through, and this will never happen again.”
Eight years and millions of dollars of care later, the 10-year-old boy cannot walk, speak or use his arms and is fed by a feeding tube. Kocher said the reduction in the jury’s award highlights a shortcoming in current laws that protect the state at victims’ expense.
“One thing we hope will come of this case,” Kocher says, “is that the Legislature in Salem will get rid of the one-size-fits-all cap on damages.”
The Oregon Attorney General’s Office, which represented ODHS, declined to comment on the jury’s verdict.
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