$30 Million Verdict Against Foster Agency That Cleared a Serial Abuser

In December 1995, an 11-year-old boy was placed into a Mountain View foster home licensed by the Giarretto Institute, a San Jose-based private foster family agency operating under a state license to screen and supervise foster placements. Over the next three and a half years, the foster parent, John Hardy Jackson, subjected the boy to more than 600 acts of sexual abuse.

When other children in Jackson's care reported the abuse during that period, the Giarretto Institute was responsible for investigating those reports. According to evidence presented at trial, every complaint was dismissed. Jackson continued to abuse the plaintiff until March 1999. He was not prosecuted until 2006, when a Santa Clara County jury convicted him on nine counts of lewd or lascivious acts by force, violence, duress, menace, and fear, and seven additional counts of lewd or lascivious acts on a child under 14.

Steve Estey of Estey and Bomberger filed suit on behalf of the plaintiff, who was 25 years old by the time the case reached trial. Two other defendants, Eastfield Ming Quong, Inc. (doing business as EMQ Children and Family Services) and Daybreak Childcare Network, Inc., settled before trial. The Giarretto Institute proceeded to verdict.

At trial, Estey argued that the Institute had a clear duty to properly monitor the homes it certified and to follow up credibly when abuse allegations arose. The jury agreed, finding the Giarretto Institute 75 percent liable for the plaintiff's injuries and Jackson 25 percent liable. On August 5, 2010, the jury returned a verdict of $30 million, making Giarretto responsible for $22.5 million of that total. Attorneys and legal reporters described it at the time as the largest single-plaintiff foster care abuse verdict in California.

No post-verdict reduction has been reported in available court records or press accounts.