Should Walmart be held liable for the harm it did in reporting suspected child abuse?

This story bothers me. Apparently innocent pictures of children at bathtime should not result in child protective services removing children from their home and putting them into foster care for a month. If those are truly grounds for taking children out of their home, then I guess we were vulnerable. Like many families, we have cutesy pictures of our children at bath time. I don't believe any of our pictures show any of the kids' genitals--we got them developed at a time when we still used 35 mm film with no problems. But I suppose that in the mind of someone hypersensitive to child pornography, they might have tried to make the case for child abuse.

I'm guessing that Walmart will settle because the story will likely engender more negative publicity than even Walmart can tolerate. If the case does proceed to trial, I doubt that Walmart will be held liable. The photo clerk's good judgement gauge might be off, but the report doesn't appear to have been malicious. If state law doesn't provide qualified immunity for the report, I'm guessing that a court will create some exception that absolves Walmart from liability.

Plus, the real problem is with the local child protective services agency. CPS is vested with the power of the state to take children out of their home, away from everything they know and love. It traumatizes the children. We can justify the trauma when there actually has been abuse or when there are solid grounds to suspect abuse or neglect of one kind or another. But there is no justification when CPS workers take children on only the flimsiest evidence.

CPS should have investigated. The workers have to question the family. And given that a wrong decision can have serious consequences, I understand the CPS practice of erring on the side of caution. But did CPS really need to remove the children from the home in order to conduct the investigation? Did it really take a month to determine that the pictures were simply the kind of pictures the family will pull out to embarrass their girls as they age?

A troubling case.