Montana Supreme Court sends child abuse case back to Cascade County court
The Cascade County Courthouse covered in snow in 2021. (Photo by Nicole Girten/Daily Montanan)
A complex and nuanced ruling by the Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday will send a horrific child abuse case back to a jury to determine whether the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services should be liable for child abuse the girl’s attorneys say was foreseeable and should have been prevented.
The case, which has been at the Supreme Court for more than a year, has several concurring opinions, as well as a dissenting one. Ultimately, the court ruled 5-to-2 to send the case back to a Cascade County jury for further court hearings to determine whether the state is responsible for not removing the child after documenting two previous incidents of child abuse. That means that a $16.6 million judgment against the state will now be vacated as well, pending a new jury trial.
In 2021, Cascade County District Court Judge Elizabeth Best ruled that the State of Montana should have reasonably foreseen the abuse, had deleted photographic evidence of the abuse, and should pay more than $16 million because the girl was abused so badly that she would need care for the rest of her life, including a feeding tube.
However, while the Montana Supreme Court ruled that a branch of Montana government could indeed be held liable for the injuries, it concluded that the judge had not applied the proper standard as to whether the state was negligent, and because it had not given the jury proper instructions, vacated the ruling. That means the case will head back to Cascade County to a likely jury trial.
Neither the Montana Attorney’s General Office nor attorneys representing the girl were available for comment on Wednesday.
Montana Department of Corrections Alicia Jo Hocter (Photo via Montana DOC).
The case involves Alicia Jo Hocter, who was the live-in girlfriend of the infant’s father. A court later convicted Hocter of child abuse and sentenced her to more than 30 years in prison. She is still in custody of the Montana Department of Corrections, according to state records.
However, attorneys for the girl also allege that the state should be held responsible because investigators were called to an apartment where Hocter and the child lived on two different occasions, and documented child abuse there, but failed to put her in protective custody. In February 2009, when the girl was a toddler, she was found by her father unconscious and unresponsive. A later medical investigation showed that she was blind and suffering from severe traumatic brain injuries that left her unable to care for herself.
A later investigation determined that Hocter had picked up the crying toddler, smashed the side of her head several times on the crib and then threw the girl back into the crib.
In its appeal, the State of Montana said that it has immunity from lawsuits like this, but that argument was rejected by the Montana Supreme Court in an 87-page opinion, written by James Jeremiah Shea.
“The plain language of (Montana law) unambiguously grants immunity to individual persons, not the state,” it said.
However, the Supreme Court also said that Best was incorrect by determining the child abuse case didn’t raise any “genuine issues of material fact.” For example, the court said that it’s debatable whether the state was negligent, and that it wasn’t for Best to decide, rather that job belonged to a jury, and ordered the case sent back. Furthermore, it said that Hocter’s actions were also similar — whether the abuse could have “reasonably” been predicted, based on past behaviors, was also a matter for the jury not the judge.
Chief Justice Mike McGrath and associate justice Ingrid Gustafson agreed with the majority opinion, while associate justice Beth Baker wrote a concurring decision, agreeing for the most part with the decision, but saying the department should only be held liable under a “gross negligence standard,” referring to the specific legal definitions established by Montana law that would qualify.
Meanwhile justices Dirk Sandefur and Laurie McKinnon agreed with the ruling, in part, and wrote a dissent.
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