Ex-Tacoma child-abuse expert accused of flawed opinions settles with 11 parents
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Eleven parents sued Dr. Elizabeth Woods who was once a state expert for child abuse.
- Woods gave flawed opinions leading to kids being removed from the parents, the suit said.
- Woods, who worked at a Tacoma hospital, recently settled the claims confidentially.
Nearly a dozen parents confidentially settled a federal lawsuit against a Tacoma hospital’s former child-abuse unit director, whom they accused of giving flawed medical opinions to authorities that led to their kids being removed from their custody.
The complaint alleged that Dr. Elizabeth Woods, while leading the unit at Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and as a state expert, provided “false, incomplete, and/or unsupportable evidence” regarding whether a child’s injury was the result of abuse. Woods also lacked the necessary expertise to conduct those evaluations, according to the lawsuit filed in late 2022.
In a court-filed response to the complaint, Woods denied the allegations, refuting that she “deliberately, consciously, and/or recklessly committed any wrongdoing when evaluating minor Plaintiffs or rendering opinions regarding the causation of their injuries.”
“Dr. Woods specifically denies that she had a history of giving false and/or misleading opinions during child abuse investigations,” the response said.
The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington, was closed on March 30, a week after a federal judge approved the settlement reached between Woods and the plaintiffs.
“Our clients are grateful for the opportunity to bring this important lawsuit and are incredibly pleased with the outcome,” Kevin Hastings, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a statement Tuesday.
Messages left this week with two attorneys representing Woods were not returned.
The terms of the settlement, reached in August, were not publicly disclosed because Woods insisted on the agreement being confidential, according to Hastings. Related settlement documents were filed under seal, court records show.
The plaintiffs who settled with Woods were 11 parents of nine children. Seven plaintiffs lived in Pierce County, at least at the time the suit was filed, including Michelle and Deonte Thomas.
Their daughter fell off a bed and struck her head while Deonte Thomas was changing her diaper, according to the lawsuit. They brought her to the hospital and were ordered to leave without her. Woods soon advised that the girl should be removed from their custody after performing an examination.
Woods didn’t note that the girl had a preexisting condition — which could have explained her test results — that caused fluid to build up in the brain and was confirmed by the girl’s primary doctor and two medical experts, the lawsuit claimed. Woods also didn’t cite medical articles that showed similar injuries from short falls, according to the complaint.
Another Pierce County couple, Miranda and Mitchell Dellinger, noticed blood in their newborn boy’s mouth. Doctors found an abrasion on his tonsil and a torn frenulum. Woods determined that the child should be taken away, but two police officers disagreed, a caseworker questioned Woods’ assessment, and the boy’s mother’s possible explanation went ignored, the lawsuit said.
All plaintiffs were reunited with their children, attorney Darrell Cochran previously told The News Tribune. Cochran, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit stemmed from court battles fought by another lawyer also on the case who reunited the families.
The legal filing accused Woods of being financially motivated by “a steady stream of State referrals” for evaluating child abuse. In her court-filed response to the lawsuit, Woods said she received no additional compensation for working as an expert witness in cases involving child abuse.
Woods was the subject in 2020 of a joint news investigation by KING 5 News and NBC News. The news outlets reported that she had not undergone medical training necessary for her expert role, lied under oath about the prevalence of such training and misstated integral facts in reports on child-abuse cases. Woods left her position with Mary Bridge’s Child Abuse Intervention Department and was removed as a state medical expert, the news outlets reported in March 2021.
Woods’ medical license expired on March 17, state Department of Health records show. She has no enforcement actions on her record, according to the department’s provider credential search tool.
Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, which was not named as a defendant, “remains committed to providing the mental and physical health services our children need to live healthy lives,” and the Child Abuse Intervention Department is “an important piece of that overall care,” a spokesperson previously said.
The lawsuit had named as defendants 10 unidentified agents of the state’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) who were alleged to have known Woods’ opinions were defective. Those agents were never identified and therefore never became parties to the litigation, according to Hastings.
The suit alleged that the state concealed evidence and misled courts. It also accused the state of not properly vetting Woods’ background when, according to the filing, questions about the reliability of Woods’ reporting, qualifications and training began to surface in 2018. A DCYF spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry Tuesday seeking comment on the suit’s resolution, although the state’s child welfare agency was not part of the case.
A parallel case filed by the plaintiffs against the state in 2022 remains ongoing in Pierce County Superior Court. In September, a Pierce County woman also sued the state in the same courthouse and alleged that Woods falsely accused her of child abuse, resulting in her three children being taken away. Neither of those lawsuits name Woods as a defendant.
DCYF, which doesn’t comment on pending litigation, denied allegations of wrongdoing, including negligence, in court-filed responses to both lawsuits, court records show. The lawsuits are seeking unspecified damages and legal fees.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the number of plaintiffs from Pierce County who were part of the settlement.
