Emotional Distress From Adverse Episode: Court Turns Down Parent’s Lawsuit.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
A close family member of the actual victim can sue for emotional distress from witnessing directly the wrongful conduct of another party that injures the victim. However, in this case the father has not established that his son’s course of care and tragic outcome were caused by negligence of the hospital’s nurses. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NEW JERSEY December 19, 2017
One of the allegations in a birth-injury lawsuit was that the baby’s father is entitled to legal damages from the hospital for his own emotional distress. He claimed he experienced emotional distress when the labor and delivery nurses appeared to have difficulty getting the fetal heart rate monitor to function during the labor, then when they rushed the mother into an operating room for an emergency cesarean, then when they brought him in to see his son in the NICU with tubes and wires connected, then when life support was withdrawn after two days.
This ruling of the US District Court for the District of New Jersey is limited to the father’s claim for emotional distress. The Court turned down the father’s lawsuit. Even though directly witnessing a family member’s adverse course or demise in the hospital can certainly be a deeply troubling experience, a fundamental requirement for a lawsuit for a non-patient family member’s emotional distress is proof that the patient’s caregivers were guilty of negligence or other wrongful conduct. Such proof was lacking in this case. Torres v. US, 2017 WL 6492016 (D.N.J., December 19, 2017).
More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/emotional-distress-claim.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/family-member-IV-insertion.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/faint.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/faint2.htm