Recently, Julia Judkins secured a victory in the Virginia Supreme Court when it granted a Petition for Interlocutory Appeal pursuant to Va. § Code 8.01-670.1(B) and reversed the trial court’s denial of the petitioners/defendants’ plea in bar in Ann Marie Francis v. Patricia Fitzgerald, et al., Circuit Court Case No. CL18-2643. The issue on appeal was whether the trial court improperly denied the defendants’ plea in bar and subsequent motion for reconsideration as to their entitlement of sovereign immunity.
This case arises from an assault on the plaintiff by a fifteen-year-old foster child. The defendants were social workers and employees of an immune entity previously dismissed from the case. In coordinating the placement of a fifteen-year-old foster child, they obtained information about the child from various sources and performed assessments to determine whether there was a family that appropriately met the best interests of the child. The defendants followed state mandated procedures and guidelines and exercised their own professional judgment and discretion in making these determinations. Ultimately, they identified the plaintiff as a potential foster parent for the child in part because of her experience fostering other children of the same age and because she had other children of the same age. Following placement, the defendants arranged planning meetings to determine what services the child might require to help him adjust to his new environment and whether and when therapy might be appropriate. Despite the initial success of placement, after returning home from a week with his grandparents, the child attacked the plaintiff with a baseball bat causing significant injuries.
