WOODSTOCK — After two weeks of testimony, a judge has ruled in the state’s favor in a case accusing the Department for Children and Families of failing to step in sooner to protect two children against years of abuse by their father and stepmother.
Judge Robert Gerety ruled Friday that “proximate cause” didn’t exist — that a jury would not have been able to deem DCF’s failure to take the children out of their home sooner as the cause of their suffering. Essentially, the judge sided with the state in ruling DCF was not responsible for the abuse.
“The court makes this decision with a heavy heart,” Gerety said. “But my conclusion is that it’s my duty to grant this motion under the law.”
Gerety said even if the jury had accepted all the evidence that was presented against the state by the children’s lawyer as true, and even if they made “all reasonable inferences” from that evidence in favor of the children, the jury still couldn’t have found the “proximate cause” that was a central element to all of their claims.
He said if the case had gone to the jury, they would have had to engage in speculation about what actions DCF might have taken in response to reports of maltreatment of the children.
Further, Gerety said whether DCF had exercised proper discretion was an assessment that fell under the purview of the executive and not the judicial branch.
On Monday, the children’s lawyers filed a notice that they would appeal Gerety’s ruling.
“The short story is that the inferences from the evidence should be interpreted in favor of the plaintiff for this ruling, and we don’t believe that happened,” said Sharon Gentry, the lawyer representing the children.
She said the children were disappointed by the judge’s decision, but in some ways, not surprised.
“In some ways, I think their experience with the state and with DCF, they feel like the state let them down once, so it wasn’t a huge surprise for that to happen again,” Gentry said.
But she said as they left the courtroom Friday, one juror had waited outside in the rain to let them know how sorry he was that the jury couldn’t make a decision in the case.
“That was very comforting for them, to know that the community understood what they went through,” she said.
In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office said the case was “difficult” because of the abuse the children alleged to have suffered, but noted that the court agreed that the state was not responsible for that abuse.
“While we sympathize with the plaintiffs’ suffering, the Court agreed with the State of Vermont that the State was not responsible for the plaintiffs’ treatment at the hands of their parents,” they wrote.
Earlier, the state’s lawyers had asked for a mistrial in the Windsor County case after VTDigger reported that jury selection tactics the Attorney General’s Office used, including searching the backgrounds of jurors to see if they had had interactions with DCF, were “likely illegal.” The judge denied that motion because there was no evidence the jury had been tainted by it.
Gerety said the decision was impacted “greatly” by his interpretation of other similar cases that have been decided by the Vermont Supreme Court.
Tom Costello, one of the children’s lawyers, noted that Gerety had indicated in his chambers that the decision to close early Friday due to weather had impacted the judge’s ruling.
Gerety quickly denied that charge, saying he had made up his mind to rule in favor of the state before he was even informed that the courthouse would be closing.
He said he briefly considered allowing the jury to come back and decide the case on Monday, even though his legal conclusion was that the children’s lawyer did not have an adequate case.
Gerety said the decision to close the court “just solidifies my thoughts about it.”
He then summoned the jurors who were still in the building, though many had left for lunch, to inform them of his decision.
“There may be a feeling, I suspect, that ‘well why did we go through this for two weeks if we’re not going to get to decide the case?’” Gerety said. “I appreciate that, but there are rare cases where the judge’s duty is to decide that the case should not be submitted, in the end, to the jury.”
“The only way that we can assess that is to hear the evidence in the case. And the only way to do that is to have you here,” he said. “Your presence here was critically important.”
He said that the case has been pending for five years, and although this may not have been the resolution that people were expecting, he said it was important the case be heard. Gerety said he would submit a written decision in the case at a later date.
