WILMINGTON, Del. (Legal Newsline) - A Delaware court recently threw out a woman’s lawsuit against a hospital that warned her not to breastfeed her newborn baby after it tested positive for marijuana.
Ernesta Coursey sued St. Francis Hospital over claims hospital personnel discriminated against her use of medical marijuana by reporting her to family services after urine tests revealed both she and her newborn boy had been exposed to marijuana. Coursey said she was also warned not to breastfeed with marijuana in her system even though she had a prescription for the substance.
She said the whole episode caused her emotional trauma, while her husband William sued for loss of consortium.
St. Francis argued for summary dismissal, saying state law required it to report the positive drug screen to the authorities and nobody interfered with her breastfeeding. She was released with her infant on time, hospital records showed, and she lost no parenting time with the baby.
Superior Court Judge Richard F. Stokes agreed, ruling in a brief Dec. 8 opinion that St. Francis had provided ample evidence through hospital records that it acted according to state law and hadn’t deprived the Courseys of their rights. Delaware requires healthcare providers to contact the Division of Family Care of positive drug scans on infants and provides immunity for doing so.
The agency cleared Coursey and her child and released them on time, the judge found. The law provides immunity specifically to encourage reporting, the judge wrote, and the fact Coursey had a prescription for marijuana was irrelevant.
If the court were to rule otherwise, he said, “it would place a burden on anyone making a report” to investigate the reasons behind the positive drug test or face a lawsuit like the one the Courseys filed.
Having rejected the premise of the lawsuit, the judge said the husband’s loss of consortium claim also must fail. He also rejected the argument it was too early to dismiss the case before evidence discovery was completed.
“As a matter of law, Defendant is entitled to summary judgment,” the judge ruled.