New Mexico Jury Awards $485 Million Against Acadia Healthcare in Foster Care Abuse Case

In 2018, an 8-year-old girl in New Mexico's child welfare system was placed in a foster home run through a network of companies owned by Acadia Healthcare. The placement was meant to keep her safe. Instead, the foster father, Clarence Garcia, raped her repeatedly while she lived in that home.

The agencies that screened and supervised the placement operated under Acadia, one of the largest publicly traded behavioral health companies in the country. Youth and Family Centered Services of New Mexico managed the foster program under the names Desert Hills and Familyworks. According to the plaintiffs, the companies had years of reports describing sexual, physical, and emotional abuse inside their foster operation. The case alleged they kept placing children in unsafe homes anyway, treating warnings about the danger as a cost of doing business rather than a reason to act.

The girl's guardians sued in the First Judicial District Court in Rio Arriba County (case no. D-117-CV-2019-00136). Four law firms worked the case together over roughly four years. Sean Claggett of Claggett & Sykes was lead trial counsel, joined by co-counsel from Fadduol, Cluff, Hardy & Conaway; Martinez, Hart, Sanchez & Romero; and Harada & Winters. The two-week trial turned on corporate conduct: what the companies knew about the risk to children, who decided to keep the program running, and how they responded to repeated complaints.

On July 7, 2023, after several hours of deliberation, the jury returned $485 million. It found the companies' conduct reckless and set $80 million in compensatory damages and $405 million in punitive damages. Acadia accounted for $330 million of the total, the Desert Hills and Familyworks entities $75 million each in punitives, and Garcia $5 million. The trial team described it as the largest single-plaintiff sexual abuse verdict in the country at the time.

Acadia said the award went far beyond reasonable expectations and indicated it would challenge the result.

That fall, Acadia agreed to a $400 million settlement that resolved this case along with two other New Mexico foster abuse suits. Under that agreement, the girl's side received $200 million, and the plaintiffs in the two other cases received $100 million each.