Doral Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez isn’t giving up on delivering justice — in the form of $20 million — to a Fort Myers boy who suffered severe brain damage after Florida repeatedly ignored alarming complaints about his drug-addicted mother, who received foster payments from the state.

Rodriguez is again filing legislation (SB 4) to compel the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to compensate the boy, called C.C. in state documents, for the lifelong care he needs after overdosing on his mother’s methadone supply.

This is the fourth consecutive year she has filed the measure. Each of her prior attempts — and those by Montverde Rep. Taylor Yarkosky and former North Fort Myers Rep. Spencer Roach, both fellow Republicans — fell on deaf ears in the Legislature. All died without a hearing.

“Senate Bill 4 addresses the lifelong medical and personal care needs of C.C., who suffered permanent injuries as an infant due to his mother’s drug use during her pregnancy, and thereafter due to the lack of appropriate oversight from DCF,” Rodriguez said in a statement.

SB 4 is classified as a claims bill, a type of legislation intended to compensate a person or entity for injury or loss resulting from the negligence or error of a public officer or agency.

Claims bills arise when the damages a claimant seeks are above the thresholds set in Florida’s sovereign immunity law, which today caps payouts at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.

The state’s position is that it wasn’t responsible for what happened to C.C. a decade ago. He’s now 11 and lives with his paternal grandfather in Lee County, where he wears leg braces to walk and receives private schooling because he can’t keep up with regular studies due to brain damage and permanent hearing, speech and vision loss he suffered, according to the Naples Daily News.

To responsible parents and those who care about children, DCF’s inattention to the many signs that C.C.’s mother, Anna Highland, was unfit to care for others is maddening.

For three years, DCF licensed Highland as a foster parent. Over that stretch, the agency failed to properly investigate seven serious complaints filed against her.

DCF licensed Highland as a foster parent in 2012, and it received little to no complaints about her in the two years after. But in the six months leading to C.C.’s birth on Aug. 12, 2014, the Department received three separate child abuse hotline reports against her, including allegations she was abusing drugs and physically harming children under her care.

C.C. was born addicted to methadone, a narcotic that reduces opiate withdrawal symptoms. Rodriguez’s bill says the drug’s presence in C.C.’s system stemmed from Highland’s use of opiates, cocaine and intravenous drugs.

DCF opened an investigation of Highland the day after a drug test came back positive.

On Sept. 3, 2014, while the investigation was still underway and C.C. remained in intensive care, the Department received two additional hotline reports alleging the same misconduct.

Despite those calls, the three preceding them and C.C.’s condition at birth, DCF advised the hospital that there were no holds on the boy and he was free to be released to Highland. The hospital did so three days later.

Roughly a month after, DCF closed the investigation with “unsubstantiated findings of substance misuse and a determination that Ms. Highland’s methadone use had no implications for child safety,” the bill says.

Things went quiet from there until June 3, 2015, and again on Aug. 6, 2015, when DCF got two new child abuse hotline reports about Highland. DCF investigated neither claim.

Then on Sept. 12, 2015, C.C. overdosed on Highland’s methadone, which he found and drank. He was found “unresponsive and not breathing,” the bill says.

The 13-month-old was rushed to the hospital, where he remained for a month, half of which he was in a drug-induced coma and on a ventilator. Upon his discharge Sept. 28, 2015, he was placed into medical foster care.

A DCF investigation found Highland and her mother, who was present at the time C.C. was found unresponsive, waited five hours before seeking medical attention for the boy. That included a three-hour nap Highland said she took with the baby after finding him on the floor with a methadone bottle. She called 911 after the boy didn’t wake up.

DCF finally removed C.C. from Highland’s care and gave him to his father. Lee County Sheriff’s personnel arrested her on charges of aggravated child neglect. She was 27.

Highland was sentenced in early February 2017 to 60 months in prison and two years of probation after her release. During that period, she was required to perform 120 hours of community service, adhere to a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and undergo monthly consultations about at-home methadone use.

Justice for Kids, an offshoot of Fort Lauderdale-based law firm Kelley Kronenberg, sued DCF in August 2017 on behalf of C.C.’s father. A Circuit Judge dismissed the case, granting DCF’s motion for summary judgment and accepting DCF’s argument that it didn’t have the same duty of care for the boy as it had for foster children under his mother’s care.

The 6th District Court of Appeal then affirmed the lower court’s decision, leaving no further legal recourse.

A Judge dismissed the case in 2023, agreeing with DCF’s claim that the agency wasn’t responsible for the boy’s injuries and did not have the same duty of care for him as it had for foster children under his mother’s care.

As such, SB 4 classifies as an equitable claims bill, meaning the case is at the mercy of the Legislature. In most circumstances, claims bills follow court judgments in which the award to plaintiffs against the state is larger than what can be paid under sovereign immunity strictures.

Lawyer Stacie Schmerling, who represents C.C., told Florida Politics last August that the $20 million being sought isn’t an arbitrary sum; it’s based on a life care plan that an expert on caring for people with C.C.’s conditions prepared in anticipation of his future needs.

C.C.’s claims bill has been the first or second measure Rodriguez has filed since 2022.

When Florida Politics asked DCF in 2023 whether anyone in the agency had been reprimanded or punished for their lack of oversight, then-DCF Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus, who is now with the Agency for Health Care Administration, deferred to the court ruling.

“A court has already made a ruling as a matter of law that the Department was not negligent in this case,” she said by email. “The Court also specifically found that the Department did not put the child at risk.”

By approving SB 4 in the 2026 Session, lawmakers would direct Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia to draw up a warrant in favor of C.C., payable through DCF to an irrevocable trust created exclusively for his benefit, of $20 million from the state General Revenue Fund.

Attorneys fees, lobbying fees and other similar expenses relating to the claim would be paid through the trust, not the state fund, and may not exceed $5 million.

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