Suit alleges false claim by DHS has cost athlete Courts: Actions ‘outrageous' Attorney claims dispute over paternity ignored rights.

TULSA — A Tulsa athlete who surrendered a college football scholarship and from whom wages were seized based on a bogus paternity claim has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against state DHS Director Howard Hendrick and members of the welfare agency's governing board.

Actions by the Oklahoma Department of Human Services "were so extreme and outrageous as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency and would be considered atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society,” ex-Tulsa Victory Christian School running back Micheal Thomas said in a lawsuit filed Friday in Tulsa federal court.

What's been reported?

The Oklahoman reported in an Aug. 10 copyrighted article that DHS officials got Thomas declared the father of a baby girl born to a Lawton drug user even though Thomas told agency officials he had never met the woman and the woman told The Oklahoman she had never met him.

DHS officials badgered Thomas, 21, until he dropped out of Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kan., forfeiting a football scholarship, he said.

Thomas took DNA tests that proved he wasn't the father, DHS records show.

However, DHS continued to take money from his paychecks and refused to tell him the test results until pressed by Tulsa attorney William "Billy” Wiland III, who agreed to take his case without pay, Thomas said.

In the lawsuit, Thomas' attorney alleges the policies and practices of DHS officials constitute a pattern that "shocks the conscience, is outside the exercise of any professional judgment and amounts to deliberate indifference to the constitutionally protected rights and liberty” of Thomas.

DHS spokesman George Johnson said the agency hoped the case could "be resolved short of litigation.”