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Patient Assault On Caregiver: Residential Facility Not Liable.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
A healthcare facility has the legal duty to protect any person lawfully on its premises from foreseeable injurious or criminal conduct by third parties. That legal duty extends to protecting facility employees from foreseeable wrongful conduct by the facility’s patients.
Liability in a civil lawsuit hinges on the victim of a patient assault being able to show the court proof that the wrongdoer’s conduct was foreseeable. The defendant healthcare facility is entitled to judgment in its favor if it can show that the facility had no notice of any prior similar incidents or aggressive behavior by the patient that would lead the facility to anticipate an incident like that which injured the victim and prompt the facility to take protective measures.
Foreseeability of harm in these cases depends upon the patient’s behavior while institutionalized and the assessments conducted by facility caregivers. In this case the nurses had observed no prior aggressive behavior by this resident that pointed to a danger posed by him to other caregivers.
NEW YORK SUPREME COURT APPELLATE DIVISION October 26, 2017A personal-care aide worked in a facility that provides residential care to developmentally disabled adults. A patient with whom she was assigned to sit suddenly and unexpectedly became combative and assaulted her.
The aide sued the facility for damages, alleging that the facility was negligent in failing to anticipate the potential for an assault and take steps to protect her from the resident’s behavior. An employee’s lawsuit is not allowed against the employer for accidental injuries in the course of employment. Workers compensation is the exclusive remedy al-lowed by law for on-the-job accidents. However, many jurisdictions allow an employee to sue if the employee’s injuries result from a physical assault on the job.
The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, ruled the facility was not negligent and dismissed the aide’s lawsuit. The aide may have been telling the truth claiming that she herself was aware that the resident in question had a history of assaultive behavior toward caregivers. However, according to the Court, that did not translate into an awareness by the facility’s nursing staff responsible for resident assessments and care planning that this resident posed any threat of violence toward caregivers.
A nurse involved in the resident’s ad-mission testified that he refused to be examined by the nurses and was agitated and verbally abusive. That nurse was called to testify because she had written a progress note as to the patient’s attitude when he was first admitted. The nurse clarified that her progress note did not refer to physically threatening behavior. It only meant that he had been difficult and had pushed a nurse’s hand away and avoided being touched during his physical examination. A physician who testified as an expert witness for the facility stated that the nurses’ recollections and the notes in the chart would not justify treating the resident as a threat to others in the facility. The facility could not have anticipated a physical assault on a caregiver.
Boudreaux v. Memorial, __ N.Y.S. 3d __, 2017 WL 4813422 (N.Y. App., October 26, 2017).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/assault2.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/assault-psychiatric-patient.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/dementia-patient-assaulted.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/dementia-care-nursing-facility.pdf