SEATTLE (Legal Newsline) - A hospital that warned thousands of patients a nurse had exposed some of them to Hepatitis C isn’t liable for causing emotional damages, a Washington appeals court ruled, upholding the dismissal of a class action on behalf of otherwise uninjured patients.
MultiCare Health System was sued after an investigation discovered that two patients with no prior record of exposure had been infected with Hep C by a nurse who was diverting drugs from the emergency department for her own use. MultiCare identified 208 patients the nurse treated and another 2,500 who received the same drugs while in the ER.
MultiCare notified them all they may be at risk of infection and instructed them to get tested for Hep B, Hep C and HIV. The hospital offered free testing and any related follow-up for any patients who were treated in the ER while the nurse was on duty. Of the 208 patients directly treated by the nurse, 13 tested positive for antibodies to the same strain of hepatitis and four had the virus, but at levels too low to be typed.
In the letter, MultiCare said “we sincerely apologize for the anxiety that this situation may cause you. This is something that should never happen in any health care facility.”
Lawyers sued on behalf of the notified patients soon after, accusing MultiCare of corporate negligence that caused inconvenience and “serious emotional distress.” A trial court certified two classes, one for patients directly treated by the nurse and a “General Treatment Class” of patients who had received the letter. MultiCare then won summary judgement against the general treatment class, and lawyers appealed.
The Washington Court of Appeals, Division II, upheld the dismissal in an Aug. 23 decision. The general treatment class members failed to establish legal causation, the court ruled, since any damages were too far removed from the fact they received a letter informing them of the nurse’s misconduct. Washington, like other states, encourages doctors and medical institutions to be honest with their patients and protects them against liability if they apologize for a bad outcome, the court noted.
“We recognize that some members of the General Treatment Class got tested for Hepatitis and suffered distress and inconvenience from doing so,” the court ruled. “But that must be weighed against a policy that encourages full transparent disclosure and notification.”