Patient Wanders From Rehab Facility: Lawsuit Dismissed (On A Technicality)
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
November 1997
Quick Summary: A disoriented patient in a halo brace wandered away alone from a rehab facility. He was found later the same day, but his halo brace had worked loose, resulting in aggravation to his neck injuries.
The family’s civil lawsuit alleged the rehab facility negligently failed to implement adequate security measures. A patient wearing a halo brace should not go unnoticed walking away by himself from a rehab facility, the family’s suit claimed, according to the Court of Appeals of Indiana.
The court reluctantly denied the family its day in court against the rehab facility, on a legal technicality. The case was not filed with the state insurance department before being filed in court. The court ruled this was negligent, apparently to open the door to the family suing their lawyer for legal malpractice for botching the lawsuit.
Mayfield v. Rehab Hospital, 690 N.E. 2d 738 (Ind. App., 1998).More from nursinglaw.com
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