Karen L. v. State Dept. of Health and Social Services, Div. of Family and Youth Services
| Decision Date | 06 February 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. S-7528,S-7528 |
| Parties | KAREN L., Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES, DIVISION OF FAMILY AND YOUTH SERVICES, Deborah Wing, Faye Moore, Patricia Chambers Mitchell, Rita Hutchens, And Ray Johnson of Division of Family And Youth Services, The Office of Public Advocacy, Barbara Malchick And Shirley Perry of The Office Of Public Advocacy, Langdon Psychiatric Corp., Greg McCarthy, M.D., And Michael Rose, Ph.D., Appellees. |
| Court | Alaska Supreme Court |
Karen L., pro se, Anchorage.
Raymond M. Funk, Assistant Attorney General, Fairbanks, and Bruce M. Botelho, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellees State of Alaska, Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Family and Youth Services, Deborah Wing, Faye Moore, Patricia Chambers Mitchell, Rita Hutchens and Ray Johnson of Division of Family and Youth Services, the Office of Public Advocacy, Barbara Malchick and Shirley Perry of the Office of Public Advocacy.
R. Collin Middleton and Gregory A. Johnson, Middleton & Timme, Anchorage, for Appellee.
Greg McCarthy, M.D. David D. Floerchinger and Harland H. McElhany, DeLisio Moran Geraghty & Zobel, Anchorage, for Appellee Michael Rose, Ph.D.
Before MATTHEWS, C.J., and EASTAUGH and BRYNER, JJ.
Karen L. sued mental health consultants and State agencies and employees, claiming their involvement in Child in Need of Aid (CINA) proceedings involving her son caused her to suffer emotional distress. The superior court granted summary judgment to the defendants, holding that the State defendants owed Karen no duty of care and that quasi-judicial immunity protected the mental health consultants. Because we agree, we affirm.
The Division of Family and Youth Services (DFYS) took emergency custody of C.L., Karen's eleven-year-old son, after he ran away from home in August 1992 and reported his mother for abuse. 1 The superior court found that there was probable cause to believe that C.L. was a CINA and committed him to DFYS's temporary custody.
During the temporary custody hearing, C.L. testified that he wished to be placed with his eighteen-year-old sister, K.L. Karen adamantly opposed the placement, alleging that K.L. used drugs and was engaged in an incestuous relationship with C.L. Karen agreed to temporary placement in the Daniels' foster home.
DFYS placed C.L. at the Daniels' foster home, but he promptly ran away and told DFYS he would stay only with K.L. After completing a home study, DFYS gave K.L. a three-month provisional foster care license and placed C.L. with K.L. Karen continued to object to placing her son in K.L.'s home. She asserted, among other things, that there were unsuitable or dangerous persons in K.L.'s home. The CINA court found that it was in C.L.'s best interest to continue living with K.L. C.L. remained in K.L.'s custody.
C.L. was experiencing problems at school in early 1993 and K.L. was having trouble handling him. C.L. returned to his mother's home in March 1993 with DFYS's permission. DFYS and Karen agreed in May that legal and physical custody of C.L. would be returned to Karen. The CINA court approved the agreement in July 1993 and dismissed the CINA case in October.
Karen filed suit in the superior court in 1994 against the State defendants. 2 Although she alleged a variety of claims, 3 in essence she claimed that the State defendants acted negligently or wrongfully in the CINA case, and caused psychological and emotional injury to her and C.L. 4 Karen filed a separate lawsuit against Dr. Greg McCarthy, Langdon Psychiatric Corporation (Dr. McCarthy's employer), and Dr. Michael Rose, alleging negligence, medical malpractice, and breach of fiduciary duty in their evaluations of Karen, C.L., and K.L. 5 The two actions were consolidated.
The superior court, Judge Peter A. Michalski presiding, granted summary judgment to all defendants and dismissed Karen's claims. Karen appeals.
We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Nielson v. Benton, 903 P.2d 1049, 1052 (Alaska 1995). We "will uphold a summary judgment only if the record presents no genuine issues of material fact and 'the moving party was entitled to judgment on the law applicable to the established facts.' " Newton v. Magill, 872 P.2d 1213, 1215 (Alaska 1994) (citation omitted); Alaska R. Civ. P. 56(c). "The proffered evidence is to be viewed in the light most favorable to the party opposing the motion." Husky Oil N.P.R. Operations, Inc. v. Sea Airmotive, Inc., 724 P.2d 531, 533 (Alaska 1986) (citation omitted). The non-moving party is entitled to have all reasonable inferences of fact drawn in its favor. Newton, 872 P.2d at 1215 (citation omitted).
The superior court ruled that the State defendants were immune from suit. After Karen moved for reconsideration, the court also concluded, applying the so-called D.S.W. duty factors, that the State defendants owed Karen no duty of care, and granted complete summary judgment to the State defendants. 6 Karen argues that the superior court erred in analyzing those factors.
Karen's claims did not allege that the State defendants caused her to suffer physical injury or abuse. They alleged instead that she had suffered psychological and emotional injury or emotional distress because (1) she and C.L. were subjected to risk of harm from abuse; (2) C.L. was given inadequate treatment; (3) she lost filial consortium with her son; or (4) she suffered a loss of employment. 7 She now argues that her emotional distress was inflicted both intentionally and negligently.
Underlying Karen's various negligence claims against the "social worker defendants" (the State, DHSS, DFYS, and their officers and employees, but not OPA and the individual GALs) is the notion that the State and its employees owed her, as mother of C.L., an actionable duty of care to protect her from emotional distress as a result of C.L.'s CINA proceedings. Karen asserts on appeal that DFYS breached duties it owed her personally when it negligently investigated K.L.'s suitability as a foster parent for C.L., negligently placed C.L. with K.L., negligently licensed K.L. as a temporary foster parent for C.L., and negligently failed to monitor the placement. She claims that the social worker defendants negligently allowed C.L. to be exposed to dangerous and abusive adults living in or visiting K.L.'s homes.
The narrow question is whether the State defendants owed Karen a duty of care to protect her from emotional distress with respect to the CINA proceeding. 8 This requires us to determine "whether the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care under the circumstances." Hawks v. State, Dep't of Pub. Safety, 908 P.2d 1013, 1016 (Alaska 1995); Stephens v. State, Dep't of Revenue, 746 P.2d 908, 910 (Alaska 1987); see also Chizmar v. Mackie, 896 P.2d 196, 203 (Alaska 1995) ().
Because common law is the only potential source of any actionable duty owed by the social worker defendants to Karen, 9 we look to the D.S.W. factors to resolve the duty issue.
Foreseeability of the harm. The foreseeability of the harm suffered by the plaintiff is often regarded as the most important D.S.W. factor. R.E. v. State, 878 P.2d 1341, 1346 (Alaska 1994); Division of Corrections v. Neakok, 721 P.2d 1121, 1125 (Alaska 1986). We must therefore decide whether it was foreseeable that Karen would suffer actionable emotional distress because of the CINA proceeding.
In another context we have required " 'reasonable foreseeability that the plaintiff-witness would suffer emotional harm.' " Beck v. State, Dep't of Transp. & Pub. Facilities, 837 P.2d 105, 109 (Alaska 1992) (quoting Tommy's Elbow Room, Inc. v. Kavorkian, 727 P.2d 1038, 1043 (Alaska 1986)). In Beck we considered whether it was error to grant summary judgment dismissing a parent's negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) claim after she saw her seriously injured daughter enter the hospital on a gurney following an accident. We noted that the facts were "intermediate" between two prior cases, Mattingly v. Sheldon Jackson College, 743 P.2d 356 (Alaska 1987), and Tommy's Elbow Room, Inc. v. Kavorkian, 727 P.2d 1038 (Alaska 1986). In distinguishing those two cases in Beck, we noted that the father in Kavorkian was permitted to assert an NIED claim after rushing to the scene of his daughter's fatal automobile accident and watching rescuers remove her from the wreckage. See Kavorkian, 727 P.2d at 1040-43. In comparison, we observed that the Mattingly plaintiff was in Ketchikan when he learned of an accident that had occurred in Sitka. We found it significant that the plaintiff was a considerable distance from the accident scene, that the shock of observing the injured victims did not follow closely on the heels of the accident, and that he had time to "steel himself" during the 150-mile flight to Sitka. Mattingly, 743 P.2d at 365-66. In Beck, the mother experienced shock as the result of a sudden sensory observation of her daughter's traumatic injuries during the "continuous flow of events in the immediate aftermath of the accident." It could not be said she had time to "steel herself." Beck, 837 P.2d at 110-11. We consequently held that it was error to dismiss Beck's NIED claim. In so ruling, we recognized that
[O]ne who is thrust, either voluntarily or involuntarily, into such dramatic events and who makes a sudden sensory observation of the traumatic injuries of a close relative in the immediate aftermath of the event which produced them is no less entitled to assert a claim for his or her...
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