Nursing License: Board's Typo Does Not Invalidate Disciplinary Proceedings
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
July 1998
Quick Summary: The Nursing Board does not have to prove the nurse received the Board’s notice in the mail. The nurse has to prove she did not.
When an agency mails out an administrative notice, the law presumes the notice was properly addressed and was actually received by the person to whom it was addressed. COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS, 1997.
The Colorado Court of Appeals did not say what the underlying charges were against the nurse. That was not the issue. The issue was whether the nurse could ignore a disciplinary hearing notice simply because of a typographical error in her address.Notices from the Board had to be mailed to a nurse at the last known address and to the attorney, if any, who had notified the Board he or she was representing the nurse. The attorney got the notice with the nurse’s incorrect address on it and mailed it to her at her correct address. The nurse got the notice from her attorney, but decided not to appear at her disciplinary hearing some three months later.
The court ruled the Board could in her absence validly place the nurse’s license on two-years’ probation for the underlying charges of professional misconduct.
Colorado State Board of Nursing v. Geary, 954 P. 2d 614 (Colo. App., 1997).