Foster Care Sexual Abuse
May 01, 2019OUTCOME: $4,800,000 resolution
The law firm of Viñas & DeLuca recovered $4.8 million for minor children who were sexually abused after being negligently placed in the custody of an adult with a verified history of sexual abuse. Ecke ... rd Youth Alternatives, Inc. and The Devereux Foundation, Inc. – who contract to provide foster care and related services on behalf of the Florida Department of Children and Families – agreed to the settlement after 3 years of litigation. Through extensive litigation, the law firm’s lawyers uncovered facts which it felt established multiple and egregious failures on the part of the defendants leading directly to physical, sexual, and mental abuse. Among those failures were blatant misrepresentations to a Court, ignoring prior acts of sexual abuse, failure to properly monitor the case file, and the failure to review and interpret background checks. In 2018, lawyers for Viñas & DeLuca successfully argued to the Court that there should be no cap on the compensatory damages which the minor children could potentially recover from a jury. The case settled in 2019.
