Legal Review & Commentary
Genital mutilation: $2 million verdict
News: While recovering from extensive knee surgery in a hospital’s rehabilitation unit, plaintiffs alleged that a patient’s penis, genitals, and scrotum were mutilated. The patient died, but it was unclear if the attack occurred pre-mortem or postmortem. The survivors claimed the incident was the result of poor hospital security. The jury agreed, awarding $2 million in compensatory damages to the decedent’s wife and adult children.
Background: A 58-year-old man went into the hospital for bilateral knee replacements. Eight days after surgery, as he was recuperating in the rehabilitation unit, an unknown assailant cut off the patient’s penis, genitals, and scrotum. This mutilation occurred on Halloween night, apparently sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m. However, the mutilation was not officially discovered or reported until after the body was taken to a funeral home.
A wrongful death suit was brought by the patient’s widow and their four adult children against the hospital and hospital employees who handled the body.
The plaintiffs claimed the death occurred because the hospital failed to provide the patient with a reasonable level of security. Before trial, the hospital denied any responsibility in the matter, claiming that the decedent’s body must have been mutilated at the funeral home after the body had been transferred from the hospital. The hospital maintained that patient had a fatal heart attack, the sole cause of death.
The hospital eventually admitted that the mutilation occurred on its premises, but denied that it was the result of poor security or that the mutilation was the cause of death. The two hospital employees who had handled the decedent’s body were eventually dismissed from the suit. Prior to trial, the parties came close to reaching a $1.5 million settlement, but the plaintiffs withdrew from the settlement negotiations when the defendant demanded that the plaintiffs sign a confidentially clause.
The plaintiffs then made a pre-trial demand of $1.5 million without a gag order, which the defendant unsuccessfully countered. During closing arguments, the plaintiffs’ counsel argued that the defendant hospital was clearly responsible for negligent security, regardless of whether or not the decedent’s death was caused by the mutilation.
The jury found for the defendant on the claim of wrongful death, yet unanimously awarded $1.5 million to the patient’s widow and $125,000 to each of the four adult children for a total verdict of $2 million in compensatory damages.
What this means to you: "Hospitals are 24/7 operations, and security staff are generally employed around the clock. Unfortunately, unless the hospital had reason to believe that there was a specific threat to a particular patient and the threat could be reliably verified, special security measures would not usually have been taken even on spooky holidays or full-moon nights — even though these are known for heightened levels of criminal activity. It is simply not possible for any hospital’s security force to prevent every action that could take place in every patient room," says Paul Ford, director of safety, security, and transportation at Tampa (FL) General Hospital.
"For instance, if the patient was sedated, an approved visitor or staff member could have gone into the room, closed the door, committed the act, and left before anyone knew what happened. Unfortunately, this could have happened at any hospital," he points out.
"While there has been some debate in the nursing home industry about placing monitoring cameras in individual patient rooms, the debate has not yet reached the hospital arena. In either setting, it is possible for patients to be unable to call out for assistance, given their underlying situation, whether that be an age or sedation factor. However, much of the rationale for installing individual monitoring devices in nursing homes is related to long-term care issues such as abuse and failure to turn, change, or feed patients, not necessarily isolated instances of misdeeds," adds Ford.
"What is actually more disturbing in this case than the act itself, is how the facility handled the situation. Obviously, the facts are disdainful and bizarre, but it seems that the hospital was in denial and did very little to assist the family in resolving the situation," he adds.
"From the start it seems that the hospital was engaged in some covert cover-up, first claiming the act did not take place at its facility, and then once it finally admitted it occurred somewhere on its property, the hospital seemed more concerned about getting the family to sign the gag order, Ford explains.
"Generally, people respond better to open honesty, even when bad or highly unusual things have happened. It seems that this case was so demented and seemingly difficult to handle with the family that the hospital simply went into denial rather than responsibly addressing the situation. In the end, it probably only made the solution more expensive," he states.
Reference
• Marion vs. Columbia Medical Center, Maricopa County (AZ) Superior Court, Case No. CV 97-20134.
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