A Boulder County judge has ruled that Colorado’s controversial parenting evaluators enjoy immunity that protects them from lawsuits, bringing an end to plans to hold several evaluators accountable through class-action litigation. The evaluators hold great influence in custody disputes brought to courts and have been the subject of a rash of complaints of bias.

In August, District Court Judge Robert Gunning dismissed a lawsuit against former parental evaluator Mark Kilmer because he found Kilmer was a court-appointed professional and as such had “absolute immunity from civil litigation.”

“This is mandated by longstanding legal principles and precedent, and is not intended to minimize the gravity of the complaint’s allegations, or the impact defendant Kilmer’s alleged actions have had on plaintiffs,” Gunning wrote in his ruling.

Henry Baskerville, a Denver lawyer, brought the lawsuit on behalf of six mothers who claimed Kilmer’s parenting evaluations were extremely biased and his custody recommendations favored abusive parents. The lawsuit had sought designation as a class action on behalf of as many as 60 parents whose custody cases Kilmer had been appointed by a judge to evaluate.

Baskerville said he does not plan to appeal the ruling.

“I think it’s an unfortunate decision, but it is what it is,” Baskerville said.

He predicted that the ruling would make it harder to hold parenting evaluators who do shoddy and biased work accountable. An investigation by The Gazette found state and judicial officials have been slow to act against evaluators whose court-appointed custody recommendations have generated complaints of bias.

The Gazette found judges have relied on inaccurate and biased reports by evaluators and put children at serious risk by giving custody to abusive parents. In these instances, parenting evaluators have shown apparent prejudice against one parent – usually mothers – questioning their credibility without proof and making assumptions about parenting without firsthand investigations.

Gunning in his ruling said parents with complaints have other avenues to seek redress against evaluators, who often charge parents tens of thousands of dollars when making court-appointed custody recommendations. He noted that parents can also raise complaints with the State Court Administrator’s Office or the professional licensing body, the Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Baskerville said those entities had allowed serious complaints to go unaddressed. He noted that several of the plaintiffs he represented already had filed complaints with the regulatory agency, which were dismissed.

The six mothers Baskerville represented sued Kilmer, who was barred from receiving court appointments to make custody recommendations by state judicial administrators in October, after he publicly declared he disbelieved 90% of the domestic violence allegations he hears in custody cases. Their lawsuit claimed Kilmer exhibited systemic bias in his court-appointed parental evaluation work.

Kilmer, who has denied allegations of bias, himself pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge and a misdemeanor harassment charge in 2007 after his then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to police reports. The charges were dismissed after Kilmer successfully completed domestic violence training and 24 months of probation.

Baskerville said that as a medical professional, Kilmer had an obligation to take seriously allegations of child abuse and domestic violence when he conducted his parenting evaluations, but he instead “laughs about it.”

“It’s like cops admitting that they come to domestic disputes and think it’s funny,” Baskerville said. “You know, if cops went on TV and said in an interview these women say they’re raped all the time, and then the cops laughed it off, there would be a public outcry.”

Following Gunning’s dismissal of the lawsuit against Kilmer, the lawyers representing Kilmer filed a motion asking the judge to award them $17,233 in attorney fees, which Baskerville said he hoped the judge would reject.

“Forcing these women to pay money to what in all likelihood is Kilmer’s insurance company is really victimizing them again,” Baskerville said.

Baskerville had planned to bring class-actions against at least two other former parenting evaluators, including Shannon McShane following an investigative report into McShane by The Gazette, but Baskerville said he would drop those plans now.

The State Court Administrator’s Office in March barred McShane from accepting court appointments as a parenting evaluator, and she surrendered her psychology license in June after complaints surfaced that she had exhibited extreme bias when making custody recommendations and had falsely claimed she held a doctorate degree in psychology. In interviews, she has denied bias in her custody recommendations and claimed she is properly credentialed despite state regulatory investigators finding she never received a doctoral degree from Hertfordshire University in England as she claimed in court.

Gunning wrote in the ruling dismissing the Kilmer lawsuit that he was “unaware of any precedent” in which Colorado appellate courts have addressed whether parenting evaluators have immunity from civil litigation, but he found that Colorado appellate courts and courts across the county “have developed a consistent rationale in similar cases that guide this court’s decision.”

He said Colorado’s appellate courts have previously reasoned that such protections are needed to “protect functions intimately related and essential to the judicial decision-making process.”