Any person who makes a report or allegation of child abuse, abandonment or neglect knowing the same to be false or who reports or alleges the same in bad faith or with malice shall be liable to the party or parties against whom the report was made for the amount of actual damages sustained or statutory damages of two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), whichever is greater, plus attorney’s fees and costs of suit. If the court finds that the defendant acted with malice or oppression, the court may award treble actual damages or treble statutory damages, whichever is greater.
Idaho Code § 16-1607
Reporting in bad faith — Civil damages
Known as the Child Protective Act
The act spans §§ 16–16 (51 sections).
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case 768 So. 2d 1060 - Jb v. Fla. Dept. of Children and Fam. Services (2000)
Most recently applied in Davidson v. Davidson (January 2011)
I.C., § 16-1620A, as added by 1995, ch. 276, § 1, p. 924; am. and redesig. 2005, ch. 391, § 9, p. 1263; am. 2007, ch. 128, § 1, p. 385.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Idaho Statutes (Idaho Legislature). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Idaho statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.