Psychiatric Patient Assaulted By Another Patient: Court Holds Facility Liable For Negligence
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
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Quick Summary: It was wrong for the facility to take no action when the victim complained another patient had been in her room and was making advances on her, frightening her, making her feel uneasy and would not leave her alone.
No notation was made in the perpetrator's or victim's chart of the victim's complaints he had been entering her room and frightening her.
Male and female patients roomed on different corridors on the unit. Both corridors could clearly be seen from the nurses station. The perpetrator had to pass directly in front of the nurses station to get from his room to the victim’s.
The perpetrator returned from a pass smelling of alcohol. He was standing at the nurses station when the victim asked for and was given a sedative to help her sleep.
An aide checked on the patients, then went to lunch, then checked again an hour after lunch and found them in her room. COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, 1997.
According to the Court of Appeals of Texas, it was foreseeable that the male patient could and would harm the female victim. A hospital has the legal duty to take steps to prevent foreseeable harm to a patient, the court said, and failure to do so is negligence for which the patient has the right to sue.
In this case the Court of Appeals upheld the jury’s verdict for the patient. The court record did not indicate the actual dollar amount.
The perpetrator had been admitted three or four times before and was well known to the facility's staff. They were aware of problems. He had shown difficulty with authority, tested the rules, responded negatively to direction and needed firm limits.
On this admission the staff noticed but failed to chart significant problems. He was flirtatious with female patients. He entered the victim's room on several occasions in violation of strict hospital rules to the contrary, without knocking, and he would remain in her room after the victim would leave. She complained several times. The staff did nothing except to reassure her the patients' rooms were being monitored. They said they were watching him and that nothing was going to happen to her. The court ruled the jury decided correctly that the staff’s knowledge of the victim's complaints and the perpetrator's propensities made it foreseeable that harm could come to the victim.
Even though his conduct was a criminal sexual assault, the criminal nature of his conduct did not absolve the facility of responsibility in civil court for anticipating and stopping what he was capable of and likely to do. In the patient's civil liability lawsuit, the facility’s negligence was considered the cause of the perpetrator's criminal conduct. Hospital v. Gobert, 992 S.W.2d 25 (Tex. App., 1997).