Roe v. Children’s Hosp. Med. Ctr. (Summary)

NEGLIGENCE

Roe v. Children’s Hosp. Med. Ctr., SJC-11533 (Mass. Oct. 1, 2014)

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of negligence claims brought against a hospital by patients. The court held that the hospital did not owe a duty to the future patients of a physician who had left the hospital’s employ and began practicing at a different hospital in another state.

The defendant, a children’s hospital in Massachusetts, had employed a pediatrician from 1966-1985. He resigned in 1985 and relocated to North Carolina. In 2009, twenty-four years later, after being accused of performing medically unnecessary genital examinations, the physician surrendered his license and agreed not to practice. Eleven former patients sued the Massachusetts hospital claiming that the hospital failed to supervise the physician during his employment. The patients also alleged that the hospital knew or should have known that the physician was conducting inappropriate genital examinations and failed to report the physician to various licensing authorities.

The court held that the hospital did not owe a duty to the future patients. The court explained that while the hospital owed a duty to supervise and monitor the physician while he was employed at the hospital, as well as a duty of reasonable care to prevent minor patients from foreseeable harm, there has never been a recognized duty that required an employer to prevent future harm to unknowable future patients by its former employee. Notably, the court held:

“While the responsibilities of medical providers to vulnerable patients might extend beyond those of other service-providing employers, the geographic and temporal breadth of the duty the plaintiffs seek to impose reaches too far and would potentially expose the employer to liability to an essentially limitless class of unknown parties for acts committed long after the employer had any ability to supervise, monitor, or discipline the former employee’s conduct.”

Interestingly, the court did not answer the question of what, if any, duty the hospital might have had with respect to inquiries made by prospective employers with regard to allegations of abuse that might have been made about the physician during his employment.