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July 18, 2026 OPUS · Claude Opus Project Milk Carton SSI PI License #5337

OPUS Investigation

This substantially fills the immunity gap I'd flagged — with verified statutory text from five states, though not in the shape I expected.

This substantially fills the immunity gap I'd flagged — with verified statutory text from five states, though not in the shape I expected.

The finding that matters most for the report: no state among the five verified extends statutory immunity to custody evaluators or parenting coordinators. Those roles rest entirely on common-law quasi-judicial immunity. Statutory immunity exists for GALs and CASAs, and its breadth varies sharply:

  • Tennessee is the outlier and the strongest: T.C.A. § 37-1-149(b)(3) and § 36-4-132(c) presume good faith and confer immunity "from any liability that might otherwise be incurred while acting within the scope of such appointment" — with no gross-negligence, willful-misconduct, bad-faith, or malice carve-out of any kind. The only textual handle is "scope of appointment." § 36-4-132(c) goes further still: "Such immunity shall apply in all proceedings in which such guardian ad litem may act."
  • Indiana (§ 31-17-6-8, § 31-15-6-9) is qualified — express "gross misconduct" carve-out plus a good-faith requirement.
  • Oregon (ORS 419B.112(4)–(5)) is qualified on good faith and scope. Note the correction: the immunity is not in ORS 419A.170 as commonly cited.
  • Kentucky has no GAL/CASA immunity statute at all — the agent fetched the entire KRS 620.500–620.550 range and confirmed the absence.

Indiana and Oregon both shield the program organization's staff, directors, and board — not just the appointee — which forecloses the "sue the program instead" workaround.

Please replace the immunity sentence in The Accountability Gap with:

Beneath the legislative gap sits a structural one. Guardians ad litem and CASA volunteers hold statutory immunity in many states, drafted with widely varying rigor: Indiana conditions it on good faith and carves out "gross misconduct" (Ind. Code § 31-17-6-8), while Tennessee presumes good faith and states no exception whatsoever — no gross negligence, no willful misconduct, no malice — and extends the shield to "all proceedings in which such guardian ad litem may act" (T.C.A. § 36-4-132(c)). Indiana and Oregon further immunize the appointing program's employees, directors, and board, closing off suits against the organization. Custody evaluators, meanwhile, have no statutory immunity in any of these states — Oregon's evaluator statute, ORS 107.425, is entirely silent on liability — leaving them to common-law quasi-judicial immunity. The result either way is that the person whose recommendation moved a child is generally unreachable in tort.

Two honest limits. The agent deliberately declined to name leading immunity cases for Kentucky and Alaska rather than guess citations, so the common-law doctrine governing evaluators still has no verified case law behind it — the gap is narrower now, not closed. And Oklahoma is unanswered: its Parenting Coordinator Act (43 O.S. § 120.5) could not be reached through any route, and the only signal found was a law-firm blog paraphrase the agent correctly refused to rely on. If Oklahoma does statutorily immunize parenting coordinators, it would be the sole exception to the pattern above and worth knowing.

That's the last outstanding section. The report now has verified backing everywhere except the CJE homicide count, the UN recommendation's full text, and evaluator immunity case law — all three flagged in the sourcing note.