Pollack Solomon Duffy LLP Announces Lawsuit Against Children's Hospital Boston for Confining 14-Year Old Girl Away from Swiss Mother

BOSTON, Nov. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Pollack Solomon Duffy LLP announced a lawsuit filed today in Suffolk County Superior Court against Children's Hospital and several of its healthcare providers, by the Swiss mother of a 14 year-old girl allegedly confined for six weeks in 2012, separated from her mother and inadequately protected from a Haverhill woman allegedly the source of Xanax on which the girl overdosed.  When finally discharging the girl, Children's Hospital returned her to the woman whose Xanax was the source of the overdose. 

Approximately six months passed before Claudia Felder of Lucerne, Switzerland, the girl's mother, recovered her daughter through a petition in Federal Court in Massachusetts under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.  A Federal trial proceeded in December 2012 and January 2013, resulting in a return of the girl to Felder in Switzerland.

Felder's lawsuit alleges that Children's Hospital failed to create a safe environment for her daughter, free of influence from the woman whose Xanax was taken.  According to the Complaint, the hospital failed to reasonably cooperate with Felder, as the girl's sole legal custodian, to return her to Switzerland for safe care by appropriate medical professionals and her family.

Felder alleges that Children's Hospital ignored information it had and red flags including that the Haverhill woman had been prescribed various medicines that can be associated with mental health issues, such as Concerta, Ritalin, Wellbutrin, Neurontin, Xanax, Klonopin and Ambien.  Felder further alleges that Children's Hospital failed to consider discrepancies among the Haverhill woman's reports and other accounts about what transpired.  As alleged, when Felder refused to pay for services while demanding her daughter's return to Switzerland, Children's Hospital supported the Haverhill woman's efforts to separate the girl and her mother. 

The civil action includes claims for negligence, interference with custody rights, and loss of filial consortium.

In another civil action involving an international child abduction, on August 23, 2013, another client of Pollack Solomon Duffy LLP won an award of $40,250,000 from Federal Judge Richard Stearns in Massachusetts based on claims that a parent had been separated from children.

PSD partner Barry Pollack of Pollack Solomon Duffy LLP commented, "there is perhaps nothing more important to protect or more valuable than the parent-child relationship." 

SOURCE Pollack Solomon Duffy LLP