A caregiver to an elderly man was falsely accused of trying to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. She was arrested, charged with attempted murder, couldn’t afford bail, and spent 28 days in custody. But she didn’t do it. Evidence showed that the man’s other caregiver fabricated the story. The falsely accused woman sued both her accuser and the company she worked for. But the trial court said she had no case because a section of the Welfare Code gives absolute immunity to all “mandatory reporters.” The California Court of Appeal agreed.

Plaintiff and appellant Lydia Valero worked for the Stanislaus County Department of In-Home Supported Service, also known as Spread Your Wings. She was hired by Michael Barton, a dependent adult with “physical disabilities and limited mental capacity” to provide him with in-home care. Barton had also hired Sabrina Dellard to care for him on the night shift. Both Valero and Dellard worked for Spread Your Wings. Dellard filed a false report with law enforcement that said she had seen Valero trying to smother Barton with a pillow. In fact, she had never seen anything. She also “coerced” Barton into supporting her version of events.

After serving her time in jail, evidence showed that Dellard’s reports about Valero were totally untrue and that the relationship between the two caregivers had been “contentious.” Valero sued Spread Your Wings for malicious prosecution. But the California Welfare and Institutions Code (Welfare Code) provided a stumbling block to Valero’s suit that was honored at the trial level by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thang Nguyen Barrett and sustained on February 10 by a unanimous three-judge panel of California’s Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The opinion, certified for publication, was written by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Helen E. Williams, sitting on assignment. Administrative Presiding Justice Mary J. Greenwood and Associate Justice Cynthia C. Lie concurred.

The Sixth Circuit’s opinion explained that the State’s Welfare Code gives absolute immunity from civil and criminal liability to mandatory reporters of elder abuse. Dellard had been a mandatory reporter. The Sixth Circuit explained that the “clear legislative aim” of this absolute immunity “was to serve and facilitate the policy goals of the act,” which are to increase the reporting of elder abuse and to minimize the “chilling disincentives” that could reduce the number of those who would report the crimes.

Valero believed that Dellard’s false report of her elder abuse deserved an exception to the Welfare Code’s immunity provision. Spread Your Wings countered by saying that Dellard and their company had absolute immunity because of Dellard’s position as a caregiver and therefore as a “mandated reporter” under the Welfare Code.

Plaintiff’s complaint states, “Ms. Dellard’s report to law enforcement was not a report of any instance of actual, known, communicated, or suspected abuse, but a fabrication from whole cloth of a scenario created in Ms. Dellard’s imagination, maliciously, and with the sole purpose of having arrested and prosecuted for a serious felony.” Defendant should not have immunity because the Code’s exemption should not “extended to a mandatory reporter who “fabricates an instance of abuse.”

Valero also argued that Barton would never have supported Dellard without her coercion and that Spread Your Wings “knew the unfitness of Dellard,” which entitled her to compensatory damages. She relied on language in the act that said immunity is only given if reports of elder abuse are “not made with malicious intent.” But the opinion said that limitation only applies to non-mandated reporters who seek qualified immunity.

The opinion rejected all of Valero’s requests for an exemption to immunity and associated damages, despite her claims that the false charges and subsequent incarceration caused lifelong damages. But the Justices were not convinced. They were not moved because no exemption from immunity was in the Welfare Code’s statutory language. In addition, the opinion said, an exception was counter to the “legislative policy goals, which are not ours to undo or undermine.” Valero’s efforts to place Barton’s coercion outside the Code’s parameters were also rejected.

Justice Williams explained that the standard of review for an appeal that dismissed an action after sustaining a demurrer is to determine whether the “complaint states facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action.” After reviewing the legislative history of the Welfare Code Act and judicial decisions made since its enactment, she emphasized the importance of the provision that gives immunity to mandated reporters. She reiterated how courts have “broadly interpreted” immunity because of the importance to “obviate the chilling effect the spectre (sic) of civil lawsuits would have upon a reporter’s willingness to become involved.”

She also explained that the California legislature had identified the fear of civil liability for “allegedly false reports as a major deterrent to the reporting of suspected cases” of child abuse, and gave parallel reasoning to reports of elder abuse. She then provided detailed reports of precedents, including those related to child abuse, which supported the need for absolute immunity.

Williams concluded by saying that “In sum, we see no reason” to accept Valero’s arguments that the absolute immunity “afforded to mandated reporters” should not include fabricated and knowingly false reports, even those that contain evidence gathered by coercion from elderly, incapacitated individuals.

It is hard to believe the Welfare and Institutions Code would go this far in its worthy goals of increasing reports of elder abuse and minimizing “chilling disincentives” that could reduce crime reports. It seems that it would be simple to amend the act to add a single word to the law. The legislature only needs to insert the adjective “legitimate” before crime to prevent another injustice by a mandated reporter.