The US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio dismissed his case, on the grounds that an employer, in this case the VA health system, is only liable in a civil lawsuit for damages for an employee's conduct if the employee's conduct came within the scope of the employee's duties for the employer.  Sexual assault or abuse of a patient is not within the scope of a nurse's duties, so the employer was not liable for the nurse's conduct, the District Court believed.

  The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, however, saw the legal reasoning behind the case as more complicated than that and ruled the patient's civil lawsuit could go forward.   Although the employer could not be held vicariously liable for a nursing employee's intentional criminal acts, the employer could be liable for negligent acts or omissions by other employees.  According to the Court of Appeals, the employer's liability in this case came from the legal duty of other employees, the perpetrator's coworkers, to report to their superiors that their coworker had assaulted and continued to sexually assault or sexually abuse a patient.

  Coworkers were negligent when they failed in their legal duty to report patient abuse, and that negligence arose directly from an aspect of their employment, their duty as caregivers to report that a fellow caregiver or other individual was acting inappropriately toward a patient.  Other nurses reportedly saw the nurse in question touching this patient in inappropriate ways.  She also boasted to several coworkers that she was dating and having a sexual relationship with a former patient, which is completely unprofessional and amounts to sexual abuse.