$31.5M settlement reached in child’s starvation death suit against city and county of San Diego, others

A lawsuit claiming systemic failures that led to the starvation death of an 11-year-old girl, allegedly at the hands of her adoptive family, has resolved with settlements tallying $31.5 million — including $10 million each from the city and county of San Diego.

The neglect lawsuit was brought on behalf of Arabella McCormack’s two younger sisters, who were 6 and 7 years old when Arabella died in August 2022. The three children had been living with a Spring Valley couple who had taken them in as foster children a few years earlier, eventually adopting them.

The girls’ attorney, Craig McClellan, told San Diego Superior Court Judge Richard Whitney in court Friday that the city and county had agreed to settle and disclosed the amounts.

After the hearing, McClellan said the settlement money, which will go into a trust, “will help the girls throughout the rest of their lives in terms of all their needs, but it can’t do anything about the psychological damage that they’ve suffered and will continue to suffer.”

The suit accused several agencies, organizations and staffers of failing to report possible abuse of Arabella, whose cause of death was COVID-19 in a “setting of severe malnutrition/neglect” — weighing less at her death than she had when she was 5 years old. ...