$4 Million Proposed for Child Drugged While in Foster Care

In what would be one of the largest settlements in county history, a Los Angeles County panel recommended paying $4 million to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of a severely brain-damaged girl who was fed a steady diet of psychotropic drugs without the required court consent.

The girl, now 4 years old and referred to in legal papers as Baby S., was given her first dose of phenobarbital in her sixth month by a foster mother who was a drug abuser, according to the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Once the foster mother secured additional prescriptions, the child’s intake was expanded to Xanax, Prozac, the sleeping drug chloral hydrate and three other psychotropic drugs, according to county documents. But county social workers were not visiting the child regularly, as required by state law. The child was only treated in January 1999, court papers say, when she was comatose and taken to a hospital.

The proposed settlement recommended by the county claims board comes two weeks after the presiding judge of Juvenile Court ruled that the county was not visiting 6,800 foster children frequently enough to ensure their well-being. Judge Terry Friedman ordered the county to get court approval for every visitation waiver that allows them to inspect foster children less frequently than the monthly state requirement.

“What happened to this child was absolutely horrendous,” said attorney Richard Voorhies, who filed the Baby S. lawsuit. But citing an agreement with county lawyers not to speak of the case in the news media, he said he could not discuss it much further.

The child, he said, is now in a 24-hour care facility. The county’s settlement, combined with $3.45 million the foster parent, doctors and pharmacies agreed to pay to settle their part of the case, will provide for the girl’s further medical care.

County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman said the settlement would be among the highest ever paid to a single plaintiff. It is scheduled to be considered by the Board of Supervisors Jan. 9.

Baby S. entered the county foster care system at birth because of an allegation that her mother had used methamphetamines while pregnant, Voorhies said. The child did not test positive for drugs at birth, nor did she exhibit any signs of drug withdrawal when she was placed with her first foster mother.

But on June 4, 1996, the county transferred Baby S. to the Carpinteria home of Lynette Harms, who had already adopted the child’s older sister. According to the lawsuit, on that very day, Harms gave the child phenobarbital that was prescribed for another child already in her care.

According to a memo by county attorneys, Harms took the child to a local pediatrician who prescribed more phenobarbital, then added the other psychotropics. Court approval is required before giving psychotropic drugs to foster children, but none was ever sought, legal papers state.

In 1998, Harms was convicted of shoplifting in Santa Maria, was suffering from compulsive disorder and was addicted to drugs, the lawsuit alleges. Still, according to legal papers, the county did not move to revoke her foster license until January 1999, after a call to their child abuse hotline warned them of the child’s condition.

Harms did not immediately return a call for comment.

Baby S. was comatose when she was taken to Santa Barbara Hospital, where she was found to have brain and liver damage, according to court papers.

During the time Baby S. was in Harms’ care, county social workers got waivers that allowed them to visit the child once every three months instead of making the monthly checkups normally required under state law. But between April and October 1998 there were no visits, county documents show.

The five social workers who handled the case are no longer with the county, according to a memo to the Board of Supervisors. County lawyers would not say whether they were fired.

County lawyers wrote in the memo that a jury could award as much as $18 million to the brain-damaged child because of the county’s “failure to follow its own policies and procedures relative to psychotropic medication authorizations, visitations and overall supervision of the minor.”