County Immune From Damages Claim Based On Breach of Confidentiality of Child Abuse Report

In All Angels Preschool v. County of Merced, the Court of Appeal affirmed a judgment, holding  that a confidentiality provision of the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act was not intended by the Legislature to protect a preschool that allegedly lost income due to a breach of that provision by a county. 

Gerald Campbell and Antoinette Searle did business as All Angels Preschool/Daycare. Campbell reported an incident of apparent child neglect by the parent of one of the children who attended All Angels to child protective services of the County of Merced. Campbell made the report pursuant to the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act in Penal Code §§11164-11174.3. 

The county and Xiong Pha, a county employee, apparently violated the mandatory duty of confidentiality in §11167(d)(1) by inadvertently disclosing to the child’s parent that Campbell had made the accusatory report. The disclosure resulted from Pha’s incorrect mailing of a county form-letter advising Campbell of the disposition of Campbell’s report. 

The addressee of the letter was Campbell at All Angels, but the street address on the letter was that of the child’s parent. Consequently, the parent removed her children from All Angels, which caused it to lose income. All Angels, Campbell, and Searle (collectively, All Angels) sued the county and Pha for damages allegedly caused by their breach of that statutory duty to keep the reporter’s identity confidential. 

The county and Pha demurred on grounds that included that the county was not liable under Gov’t Code §815.6 for breach of a mandatory duty and that Pha was immune from liability as its employee under §821.6. The trial court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend and dismissed the action. All Angels appealed.

 The court of appeal affirmed, holding that the Legislature did not intend for §11167(d)(1) to protect against the type of harm that All Angels suffered. 

The court noted that §815.6 requires that the mandatory statutory duty be designed to protect against the particular kind of injury that was suffered and found that §11167(d)(1) was not so designed as to All Angels’ alleged damages. Based on declarations of legislative intent, it could be inferred that the essential purpose of the confidentiality provision was to foster the “cooperation” of those who might be reluctant to report child abuse or neglect were their identities made known. 

However, there was no indication in the legislative history of §11167(d)(1) that its design or goal was also to prevent particular harm to those who reported child abuse or neglect. Nor was that specific issue resolved by reference to the legislative purpose of encouraging reporting. Rather, legislators reasonably could have concluded that such purpose was adequately served by a law requiring confidentiality or by subsequently making it a crime to violate the confidentiality provisions of the reporting act. 

In light of the specificity used in §11172 to describe the harm being protected against in that provision, it was reasonable to assume that if the Legislature was similarly concerned in §11167(d)(1) with protecting reporters of abuse from particular harm, that concern and the harm being prevented would have been mentioned in the legislative history materials, if not in the statutory language itself. 

The silence of the Legislature on that question suggested a more limited purpose. Although the risk of harm to those who reported abuse or neglect was undoubtedly minimized by such confidentiality, that appeared to be an incidental benefit of §11167(d)(1), not its essential purpose. Therefore, the county was not liable under §815.6. 

Additionally, the agreed with the trial court that Pha was immune from liability under §821.6 because Pha’s alleged wrongdoing occurred in the course of an official investigation of child abuse or neglect. That is, §821.6 expressly protects public employees in their prosecutorial duties from the threat of harassment through civil suits. Applying here the broad interpretation of §821.6 reflected in precedents, there was no doubt that Pha was immune.