Jury awards mom $4.9 million. Woman said her children were improperly taken by government.

The Orange County Register ^ | 3-27-2007 | Edcoil

[G Larry]

Read "Accused" by Mike Farris.

The woman's Ex makes false charges and then the mother P.O.'s the social worker, telling her to get lost.
Then the social worker returns w a sherrif & court order.
Mom doesn't find out for 2 weeks that the social worker "claims" to have seen bruising.
Of course after 2 weeks you can't "prove" what wasn't there.
Social workers don't get paid for NOT finding problems!

[Mase]

OTOH, the jury was 10-2 so there must be some legitimacy to her claims.

Having known the mother and father in this case for almost 20 years I can tell you that this verdict is a text book case of a jury run amok. The children were taken from this woman for very good cause. The social workers only repeated what this very unstable woman said to the judge. The social workers only did what the judge told them to do. Although taking them from their mother proved to be a traumatic experience for the two girls, the mother had refused to cooperate with the court on numerous occasions and is easily the most belligerent person I've ever met.

If this reporting was more in depth and factual they would tell the readers what led up to this event and then most here would have a much different opinion of this award. Deanna Fogerty brought most of this upon herself. There are very good reasons why she was not given custody of her children.

She's been suing people for almost 12 years now and regularly burns through lawyers. Had I not had a front row seat for this entire debacle I would say this is another case of the state abusing their power. After watching what this woman did to her kids, her ex-husband, her friends and her family, it is just astounding to me that she has been awarded any money at all, much less $4.9 million.

If you're being sued, the last thing you want to do is get in front of a jury. She most definitely won the lottery.

[Mase]

The "fabricated evidence" claim is by the lawyers trying to make a few million dollars, I wouldn't take that without a grain of salt.

You are absolutely correct. There was no fabrication of evidence. This woman is in no way a victim even though her lawyers did a superlative job of making her appear that way. This is a travesty.

[adopt4Him]

I was just reading thru this string and saw your post. God bless you for hanging in there with your son. But I’m shocked that you weren’t given the education you needed long before he was placed with you, so that you could anticipate the behaviors and the degree of trauma he had endured. The list you mention are VERY common for these children — even at 3. None of them should have taken you by surprise, and i blame your agency (or your county if you went thru them) for not adequately preparing you. I was equipped and ready for all those kinds of behaviors and acting out, but have had virtually none of them with my four siblings I recently adopted (see my post earlier).

So sorry you went thru that with them. Praise God you hung in there, and his life has turned around.