Husband Helping Pregnant Wife From Car To Wheelchair: Hospital Not Liable For His Back Injury
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
August 1995
Quick Summary: Hospitals are not liable for injuries received by patients’ relatives while they are assisting the patient. In this case the patient’s husband alleged that the hospital owed a duty of care to members of the public to provide emergency services in a proper manner in the designated emergency area, and that the hospital breached its duty of care by failing to provide trained personnel to remove his wife from his vehicle and transport her into the hospital.
The Court of Appeals of Georgia ruled that a hospital owes a duty of reasonable care to its patients, and is liable for injuries negligently inflicted upon its patients by its employees. However, the husband was not a patient of the hospital at the time he sustained his back injury, but merely a visitor. The hospital’s legal duty to a visitor arises only when the hospital has superior knowledge, compared to the visitor, of the alleged condition which causes injury to the visitor.
Meinken vs. Hospital, 454 S.E. 2d 147 (Ga. App., 1995).