Wrongful Adoption and Agency Liability, Page 2

The Cases

Fraud

The first reported wrongful adoption case was decided by the Ohio Supreme Court in 1986. Burr v. Board of County Commissioners set the legal precedent for wrongful adoption, and defined the early parameters of the litigation. A public child welfare agency reported to a prospective adoptive couple that the child referred to them was a "nice, healthy, baby boy." His mother, the parents were told, was 18 and single trying to care for the child and work during the day. The mother's parents, who cared for the child during the day, were "mean" to the child, the agency said. The child was available for adoption because the mother had decided to surrender her child to State custody and leave the State for better employment.

Later, medical tests revealed delayed mental development for the child, who was classified as "educable, mentally retarded" at age 9. He attended public school special education classes. After the child was diagnosed with Huntington's disease while in high school, his parents obtained a court order to see their child's original placement records. These records revealed that his mother was a 31-year-old patient in a State mental hospital and that the baby was born within the facility. The birth father was presumed by the hospital and the agency to be a patient in the same hospital. All other information provided to the parents-the maternal grandparents, the mother's desire to work, the move out of state-was false. Also in the file, the parents found that the agency had medical assessments that indicated a level of intellectual functioning for the child as "below normal." Additionally, the agency had known the family's history, which indicated a high risk for Huntington's disease for the child. The only accurate information passed to the family about the child was his age and gender. An Ohio court awarded the family $125,000 based on past medical and other expenses, and the pain and suffering of the family.

In Juman v. Louise Wise Services, a couple applied to adopt a healthy infant boy from a private agency in 1964. The agency told the parents about a 16-month-old boy and described his mother as being in her 30s, with a scholarship to a well-known college and 2 years of completed course work. The birth mother, the family was told, had experienced some "emotional difficulty" after the death of a boyfriend from a heart attack and had become pregnant in her grief.

The boy, named Michael, developed serious psychological disorders in his teens, and required numerous hospitalizations. During the diagnostic process, in the mid-1980's the adoptive parents were asked to obtain background information about Michael's birth family. The family was told at that time by the agency that the birth mother had a history of episodic depression for which she had received treatment. Later investigation found that the birth mother had a long history of mental illness, had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and hospitalized, and had undergone a prefrontal lobotomy before the birth of her child. The case is still pending.

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Credits: Child Welfare Information Gateway (http://www.childwelfare.gov)