Lawsuit Over Reporting of Possible Child Abuse Dismissed by Justices

A state appeal court Thursday dismissed a lawsuit filed against a San Diego doctor who aggressively reported a case of suspected child abuse, saying that the laws designed to encourage those reports make a doctor absolutely immune from suit, even if there is no abuse.

The ruling came in a civil lawsuit brought by an Oceanside woman who was acquitted of criminal charges of felony child abuse in the drowning of her son.

The 4th District Court of Appeal said that the interest in uncovering child abuse outweighs the harm from improper doctors’ reports. Though there might be valid reasons for changing the law to allow recoveries against doctors who unjustly accuse a parent of abuse, that is for the state Legislature to decide, not an appeal court, a three-judge panel of the 4th District court ruled unanimously.

The case, filed against Children’s Hospital in San Diego and Dr. David L. Chadwick, the director of its Center for Child Protection, had been closely watched by physicians.

Already hesitant to intervene in possible child-abuse cases, doctors said several years ago when the civil lawsuit was filed that a verdict against the hospital and Chadwick might lead them to reassess reporting child-abuse suspicions if reports might later lead to litigation.

Chadwick could not be reached Thursday for comment.

The case was filed by Carol Phinney, a one-time Oceanside resident, who set out to prove that Chadwick and other doctors at the hospital unfairly cast her as a child abuser who killed her 2-year-old son, Travis.

Travis was taken to the hospital after Carol Phinney found him Sept. 3, 1984, face down and unconscious in bathwater, where she had left him unattended for five minutes. Doctors treated him for a month before he died of complications, including pneumonia, from a head injury.

Suspecting child abuse, Chadwick reported that possibility to authorities. Based largely on that report, the district attorney’s office filed a murder charge against Phinney. It was later dismissed.

Still, Phinney was taken to trial accused of felony child abuse. She was acquitted in October 1985.

At the conclusion of the trial, Judge Lawrence Kapiloff said Phinney was victimized by “too many people who wanted, frankly, to cover their own hides.” He suggested that she file a civil suit, which she did.

Judge Jeffrey T. Miller, however, said later that the case had no merit, ruling that doctors were absolutely immune from suit under the state law requiring reports of suspected abuse. On Thursday, the 4th District agreed.

Judge Daniel J. Kremer wrote the opinion affirming the doctors’ immunity. Judges William L. Todd Jr. and E. Mac Amos, a San Diego Municipal Court judge specially assigned to the case, concurred.