Quick Summary: When a child’s condition gives hospital personnel reasonable cause to believe that placing the child back into the parents’ custody would present an imminent danger of harm to the child, the hospital must take all necessary and appropriate measures, including retaining custody of the child pending initiation of child-protective proceedings.

  A healthcare professional or institution making a child protective services report, removing a child from the parents or retaining physical custody of a child, with a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent further imminent harm to the child, cannot be held liable in a civil lawsuit. SUPREME COURT, MONROE COUNTY NEW YORK, 1996.

   The child was taken to the emergency room by the parents on their pediatrician’s advice. X-rays showed a fractured femur, which the Supreme Court of Monroe County New York noted was an unusual injury for a five-month-old, and one for which the parents were unable to offer any explanation.

   An orthopedist casted the leg and told the parents the child had to be held twenty-four hours for medical observation. The hospital social worker went to work. She consulted with her supervisor, then called the local child protective services hotline, and was given to understand the hospital should hold the child pending an investigation. Child protective services obtained the cooperation of local police. They posted an officer at the door of the child’s room to prevent the parents from taking the child. The child went into foster care, then was placed with the child’s grandmother.

   According to the court record, criminal charges of abuse were never conclusively proven against the parents. The parents sued the hospital in civil court for intentional infliction of emotional distress, interference with the custodial relationship with their child, violation of their civil rights and false imprisonment of their child.

   The court threw out the parents’ case against the hospital. Hospital personnel by law must report evidence of apparent child abuse. If so ordered, they must hold the child pending completion of a child protective services investigation of possible abuse and the filing of legal proceedings to remove the child into foster care.

   When acting under a reasonable belief that their actions are warranted to prevent further imminent harm to an apparently abused child, hospital personnel are immune from liability in civil and criminal court for their actions, the court ruled. Sager vs. Hospital, 647 N.Y.S. 2d 408 (N.Y. Sup., 1996).

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