Toddler overdosed on mom’s meth after Oregon DHS left him in her care, $2.6M lawsuit says

UPDATED JULY 15: This story includes comment from the boy’s mother, who disputes information in the lawsuit and from the boy’s lawyer.

A $2.6 million lawsuit faults Oregon’s Department of Human Services for allegedly failing to remove a 2-year-old boy from his mother’s Beaverton home even though child welfare workers had received “many” reports that the boy might be in danger.

The suit and a lawyer for the boy allege that the workers’ decision not to intervene in the boy’s life earlier had disastrous consequences: In February 2022, the boy ate methamphetamine that he found while in his mother’s care, overdosed and was placed in a medically induced coma for a few days while his body fought the immediate aftereffects of the drug.

Beaverton attorney Paul Galm said the boy, now 4, lives with other family members but is still struggling developmentally and suffers seizures, tantrums and delayed language and motor-control development.

“These behaviors include head banging, tearing chunks of hair out of his head, and biting himself,” Galm said in an email. “He must wear a helmet to protect against self-harm.”

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Roy Kaufmann, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice, which will defend the state in the lawsuit, said the state is “reviewing the filing.”

The lawsuit comes at a time when drug overdoses — specifically fentanyl overdoses — by children are soaring. Last summer, the Portland Police Bureau said nine children in the city overdosed on fentanyl and five of them died. In February, a Hillsboro man was sentenced to four years in prison after his 2-year-old overdosed but survived after eating fentanyl pills in the car he was driving.

The lawsuit and Galm say the boy’s mother, Charlene Marie Smith, had “a long and well-documented addiction to methamphetamines,” and DHS had permanently terminated her parental rights to two of the boy’s half-siblings before he was born.

In 2020, Galm filed suit against the state for failing to protect one of the boy’s half-siblings from his mother. That lawsuit alleged the boy’s half-sister was physically and sexually abused by a family member and lived with her drug-addicted mother in a home where drugs were sold. Galm negotiated a $300,000 settlement from the state in 2022 before that case went to trial.

In the case of the 2-year-old boy, his mother brought him to the hospital in February 2022, saying she believed he had picked up and ingested someone else’s methamphetamine in the restroom of a Clackamas County park, according to the suit and public documents.

But Galm said information later surfaced that the meth was from the mother’s car.

Washington County prosecutors declined to pursue charges against Smith because the alleged crime — criminal mistreatment — happened while the boy, mother and her car were in Clackamas County, according to a document the Washington County District Attorney’s Office provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

A spokesperson for the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office said his office didn’t receive the case for review and that cases are typically referred to his office by police agencies.

Reached by text Monday, the boy’s mother — Smith — said she disputes much of the information provided by the boy’s lawyer and in the lawsuit. She said the boy “never got into meth” and whatever he was exposed to came from someone else’s car or the park bathroom.

— Aimee Green covers breaking news and the justice system. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or @o_aimee.

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