Assault By Hospital Employee - Off Duty: Court Upholds Right To Terminate

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

July 1999

  Quick Summary:  An off-duty aggravated assault by a hospital employee is misconduct connected with the employee’s work at the hospital and is serious enough to permit termination for cause.

A hospital’s policy against inflicting harm to persons is fundamental to its health care mission.   SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS, 1998.

   A hospital’s housekeeping supervisor with twenty-five years service pled guilty to felony aggravated assault charges for going to her husband’s alleged lover’s residence and slashing her with a box cutter. She was placed on four-years probation by the criminal court.

   Then she was fired from her job at the hospital. She contended her conduct was not connected with her employment and thus did not justify termination from the hospital.

   The Supreme Court of Texas disagreed. It ruled a hospital is justified in enforcing a personnel policy that prohibits malicious or destructive acts harmful to persons by hospital employees, whether such acts occur on or off the hospital premises or during or outside working hours.

   A hospital is entitled to believe that a person capable of such an act poses a threat to patients’ safety and could compromise the hospital’s duty to insure its patients’ welfare. Hospital v. Hunnicutt, 988 S.W. 2d 706 (Tex., 1998).