State drops case against mom

Don’t mess with Canadians.

That was the message an Edmonton, Alberta, attorney gave Tuesday after the state of Oregon dropped its case against his client, a Calgary woman whose son the state kept in Lane County in foster care against her will for almost two years.

The Oregon Attorney General’s office sued the woman, Lisa Kirkman, in Calgary in September for about $7,500 in medical and child-support costs for the time her 12-year-old son, Noah, was in Lane County foster care from the fall of 2008 until June of this year.

“I think there was public pressure and there wasn’t anything in it for (Oregon) to be chasing a single mother,” Daniel Mol, the attorney for Lisa Kirkman, said Tuesday. “The cost would have been greater to them than what they had to gain.”

Mol added in a press release: “With this out of the way, we will be suing the state of Oregon for compensation for Lisa and Noah, and to send the message that you don’t mess with Canadians.” He added: “We want Canadians stranded abroad to know they’re not alone. There is a network of professionals who want to help.”

In May, former Lane County juvenile court Judge Kip Leonard ordered the Oregon Department of Human Services to send Noah back to Calgary to live with his maternal grandparents. Police and state DHS workers had taken the boy into custody in Oakridge sometime late in the summer of 2008. Police had spotted him alone and unsupervised more than once around town. Lisa Kirkman had sent the boy to live with her husband, John Kirkman, Noah’s stepfather, that summer.

Leonard approved the state taking custody of the boy and putting him in foster care, saying Lisa Kirkman had “abandoned” her son.

The case ended up drawing substantial media coverage on both sides of the border as Kirkman persisted in trying to get her son back, and Oregon authorities resisted, saying Kirkman — a marijuana activist who once ran a medical pot dispensary in British Columbia before being convicted there of growing the drug illegally — was not a fit mother.

Alberta government lawyer Jade Duong appeared in family court in Calgary on Tuesday on behalf of Oregon to withdraw the state’s claim, according to the Calgary Sun newspaper. “My instruction moving forward is to withdraw the application by the state of Oregon,” Duong told family court Judge Ted Carruthers. “The State of Oregon has reconsidered their position.”

Oregon determined the case was no longer worth pursuing based on a “cost-benefit analysis,” Oregon Department of Justice spokesman Tony Green said Tuesday. It’s “fairly routine” for the state to file claims in other states in such cases, Green said. But most of those whom the state sues in such situations do not hire an attorney to represent them, plus pursuing such a case in another country was problematic, Green said.

“It was clear Alberta was not going to represent us on this thing,” he said. Thus, the state determined that trying to recoup $7,500 by spending more than that was not in the best interest of Oregon taxpayers, Green said.

According to DHS policy, parents are to be informed by a caseworker of their financial obligations and referred to the agency’s Child Support Program when their children are placed in foster care. A parent’s financial responsibility to pay for the foster care is waived only in certain circumstances, according to the policy, including if the legal parent is dead; if their parental rights are terminated by the court; or if legal proceedings for adoption are pending and establishing paternity would be detrimental to the child.

Leonard allowed Noah Kirkman to be returned to Canada on condition that he live with his maternal grandparents, Michael and Phyllis Heltay. But Mol said Tuesday that the boy has been back living with his mother since a couple of days after his return in June.

A social worker with Calgary and Area Child and Family Services testified during the May hearing in Lane County that it would take over Noah’s case from Oregon and immediately do an assessment upon his return with the goal of eventually returning him to his mother, who initially would only be allowed to see her son every two weeks during supervised visits.

The Calgary newspaper quoted on Tuesday quoted Lisa Kirkman as saying she was glad Oregon “came to some sense. I’m still angry at Oregon for taking my child and keeping him,” she said. “I’m still trying to get over what happened.”