The Utah Supreme Court, today, ruled that Parker Jensen and his parents have no legal claim against the State, its employees and the doctors who turned him into the State.

In 2003, Parker was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer at Primary Children’s Medical Center.  PCMC recommended surgery and chemotherapy.  The chemotherapy was very aggressive and ran the risk of making Parker sterile.  The parent’s refused treatment at PCMC. Instead, they sought second and third opinions and even considered alternative treatments.

In a regularly scheduled meeting between the staff at PCMC and the Utah Division of Child and Family Services, Parker’s case was discussed.  It was decided that DCFS would file a juvenile court case against Parker’s parents and obtain a court order requiring chemotherapy.

The juvenile court judge agreed.  Parker’s parents violated the order and took Parker to Idaho.  The juvenile court issued a warrant for their arrest.  The Salt Lake prosecutor’s office filed charges of kidnapping against Parker’s parents.

They were arrested in Idaho and Parker’s dad spent four days in jail.  He was also fired from his job.

When political pressure was brought to bear on DCFS, they dropped the juvenile court case.  Parker never got chemotherapy and it turned out the doctors were wrong.  He did not have cancer.  He is currently serving an LDS mission in Chile.

The Supreme Court threw out the case because under Utah law, people can only sue for money for the violation of a constitutional right if the violation is flagrant.  The Court held that the violations were not flagrant.

Parker’s case did contribute to some good changes in DCFS and the juvenile courts.  Shortly after Parker’s case, the legislature allowed some public access to juvenile court cases.  This is important because prior to that, everything in juvenile court was done in complete secrecy.

Hopefully, a case like Parker’s won’t happen again.  At the time, the State made several untruthful statements to the press to pain Parker’s parents in a bad light.  Because the proceedings were held in secret, the press had no ability to verify the accuracy of the statements.

Shortly before Parker’s case, I handled a somewhat similar case in juvenile court.  My client was accused of having a mental illness that caused her to pretend that her son was constantly sick.  I brought in a doctor who testified that the son had real illnesses and the mother wasn’t imagining them.

The juvenile court judge ignored the doctor who said the child was sick and followed the suggestion of the caseworker, DCFS and their doctor.  The son was put into foster care.

Putting him in foster care, much to the surprise of DCFS, did not cure him.  Over the next several months the son grew more and more ill.  Eventually, the son was returned to his mother.

The sad thing was that a mother-child relationship was unnecessarily interfered with.  It makes one wonder how many more times DCFS has made this type of tragic mistake.

Opening the juvenile courts to scrutiny by the press and public is a good thing.