All Angels Preschool/Daycare v. Cnty. of Merced

• Decision Date: 11 July 2011
• Docket Number: No. F060905.,F060905.
• Citation: 2011 Daily Journal D.A.R. 10416,11 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8722,197 Cal.App.4th 394,128 Cal.Rptr.3d 349
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: ALL ANGELS PRESCHOOL/DAYCARE et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. COUNTY OF MERCED et al., Defendants and Respondents.

197 Cal.App.4th 394

128 Cal.Rptr.3d 349

11 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8722

2011 Daily Journal D.A.R. 10,416

ALL ANGELS PRESCHOOL/DAYCARE et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants,

v.COUNTY OF MERCED et al., Defendants and Respondents.

No. F060905.

Court of Appeal, Fifth District, California.

July 11, 2011.

Gerald Campbell and Antoinette Searle, in pro. per., for Plaintiffs and Appellants.

James N. Fincher, County Counsel, and James E. Stone, Deputy County Counsel, and Roger S. Matzkind for Defendants and Respondents.

OPINION

KANE, J.

Under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (Pen.Code, §§ 11164–11174.3; hereafter the Reporting Act), when a person reports known or suspected child abuse or neglect to an appropriate government agency, the identity of the person making the report is to remain confidential. (Pen.Code, § 11167, subd. (d)(1).) ¹ In this case, defendant County of Merced (the County) and its employee, defendant Xiong Pha, allegedly violated that duty of confidentiality by disclosing to a parent that plaintiff Gerald Campbell, her child's preschool operator, made a report accusing her of child neglect. Although the matter was closed after a brief investigation, the parent was upset by Mr. Campbell's report and removed her children from the preschool run by plaintiffs Mr. Campbell and Antoinette Searle, causing the preschool to lose income. Plaintiffs filed a complaint against defendants for damages allegedly caused by defendants' breach of the statutory duty to keep the reporter's identity confidential. Defendants demurred on several grounds, including that the County was not liable under Government Code ² section 815.6 (for breach of mandatory duty) and that its employee was immune from liability under section 821.6. The trial court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend. Plaintiffs appealed, arguing the complaint set forth a viable cause of action.

For the reasons explained below, we hold that the trial court correctly sustained the demurrer without leave to amend. The issue of whether the County may be liable pursuant to section 815.6 for a failure to comply with the confidentiality provision in the Reporting Act boils down to a question of legislative intent. We conclude that the County is not liable under section 815.6 because the Legislature, in enacting the subject confidentiality provision, did not intend to protect against the type of harm suffered by plaintiffs in this case.³ Additionally, we agree with the trialcourt that the public employee was immune from liability under section 821.6. The judgment is accordingly affirmed.

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

The operative pleading at the time of the demurrer hearing was the third amended complaint (the complaint), which we now summarize. Plaintiffs Gerald Campbell and Antoinette Searle were doing business as All Angels Preschool/Daycare (hereafter the Preschool), located near Los Banos, California. On July 2, 2008, Gerald Campbell, who was required by the Reporting Act to report instances of suspected child abuse or neglect,⁴ contacted the Child Protective Services department of the County to report an incident of apparent child neglect by the parent of one of the children attending the Preschool. Mr. Campbell was instructed to submit a Department of Justice form entitled, “Suspected Child Abuse Report,” which he promptly did. After a brief investigation, the County employee/social worker assigned to the case, Xiong Pha, determined that the situation had stabilized and the case was closed. However, in the course of his investigation, Xiong Pha disclosed to the parent who was under investigation that Mr. Campbell was the person who had filed the report against her.

According to the complaint, Xiong Pha revealed Mr. Campbell's identity as the reporter of suspected child neglect by sending to the child's parent the County's form letter entitled, “Emergency Response Notice of Referral Disposition,” which was supposed to be mailed to Mr. Campbell to inform him of the disposition of his report, but was mailed to the parent's address instead. A copy of the form letter was included as an exhibit to the complaint, and it showed that the name of the addressee was “Gerald Campbell [¶] All [A]ngels Preschool.” However, according to the complaint, the street address listed was that of the parent in question. The form letter purported to notify Mr. Campbell: “Situation stabilized—case closed.” It also thanked Mr. Campbell for “[his] report” and “diligence in looking out for the safety of children....” When this information was received by the parent, there could be no doubt in the parent's mind that Mr. Campbell had filed the report of child neglect to the County agency handling child protective services. As a result of that disclosure, the parent pulled her children out of the Preschool, resulting in a loss of income to plaintiffs' Preschool business. The complaint for damages was framed in terms of “negligence” based on violation of a mandatory statutory duty to keep the reporter's identity confidential.

On May 13, 2010, defendants demurred to the complaint on the grounds that plaintiffs failed to state a cause of action against the County under section 815.6 and that the County employee was immune from liability under section 821.6. On July 1, 2010, at the hearing of the demurrer, the trial court agreed that the employee was immune under section 821.6 because his actions occurred in the course of an official investigation of abuse or neglect. Further, because the employee was immune, the trial court concluded that pursuant to section 815.2, subdivision (b), the County was not liable. The demurrer was therefore sustained without leave to amend and the action was dismissed.

Plaintiffs' timely appeal followed.

DISCUSSION

I. Standard of Review

“In reviewing the sufficiency of a complaint against a general demurrer, we are guided by long-settled rules. ‘We treat the demurrer as admitting all material facts properly pleaded, but not contentions, deductions or conclusions of fact or law. [Citation.] We also consider matters which may be judicially noticed.’ [Citation.] Further, we give the complaint a reasonable interpretation, reading it as a whole and its parts in their context. [Citation.] When a demurrer is sustained, we determine whether the complaint states facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. [Citation.] And when it is sustained without leave to amend, we decide whether there is a reasonable possibility that the defect can be cured by amendment: if it can be, the trial court has abused its discretion and we reverse; if not, there has been no abuse of discretion and we affirm. [Citations.] The burden of proving such reasonable possibility is squarely on the plaintiff. [Citation.]” ( Blank v. Kirwan (1985) 39 Cal.3d 311, 318, 216 Cal.Rptr. 718, 703 P.2d 58.)

II. No Direct Liability of the County

We begin with the alleged liability of the County. The complaint purports to state a cause of action for public entity liability based on breach of mandatory statutory duty under section 815.6.⁵ It is appropriate at this point in our discussion to review the relevant principles of public entity liability under that provision.

Preliminarily, we note the basic rule of section 815 regarding public entity liability: “Except as otherwise provided by statute: [¶] ... [a] public entity is not liable for an injury, whether such injury arises out of an act or omission of the public entity or a public employee or any other person.” This means that “ direct tort liability of public entities must be based on a specific statute declaring them to be liable, or at least creating some specific duty of care, and not on the general tort provisions of Civil Code section 1714. Otherwise, the general rule of immunity for public entities would be largely eroded by the routine application of general tort principles.” ( Eastburn v. Regional Fire Protection Authority (2003) 31 Cal.4th 1175, 1183, 7 Cal.Rptr.3d 552, 80 P.3d 656( Eastburn ), italics added.) ⁶

Section 815.6 provides a statutory basis for direct liability of a public entity ( Eastburn, supra, 31 Cal.4th at p. 1180, 7 Cal.Rptr.3d 552, 80 P.3d 656), and states as follows: “Where a public entity is under a mandatory duty imposed by an enactment that is designed to protect against the risk of a particular kind of injury, the public entity is liable for an injury of that kind proximately caused by its failure to discharge the duty unless the public entity establishes that it exercised reasonable diligence to discharge the duty.” As is apparentfrom the statutory language, there are three elements necessary to establish the liability of a public entity under section 815.6:(1) A mandatory duty imposed on the public entity by an enactment; (2) the enactment was designed to protect against the particular kind of injury that the plaintiff suffered; and (3) the plaintiff's injury was proximately caused by the public entity's failure to discharge its mandatory duty. ( Guzman v. County of Monterey (2009) 46 Cal.4th 887, 898, 95 Cal.Rptr.3d 183, 209 P.3d 89( Guzman );de Villers v. County of San Diego (2007) 156 Cal.App.4th 238, 256–257, 67 Cal.Rptr.3d 253.)

Here, the enactment that allegedly created a mandatory duty on the part of the County to keep the identity of persons who report abuse or neglect confidential was Penal Code section 11167, subdivision (d)(1). That provision states as follows: “The identity of all persons who report under this article shall be confidential and disclosed only among agencies receiving or investigating mandated reports, to the prosecutor in a criminal prosecution or in an action initiated under Section 602 of the Welfare and Institutions Code arising from alleged child abuse, or to counsel appointed pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 317 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, or to the county counsel or prosecutor in a proceeding under Part 4 (commencing with Section 7800) of ...