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Court orders Boston Medical Center to face negligence trial over interpreter who fondled a woman in labor

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today a couple suing Boston Medical Center for negligence will get their day in court.

A Suffolk Superior Court judge had dismissed their case against BMC before it could go to trial after agreeing with the hospital that it had no way to know the interpreter, who had a clean criminal record, might disregard hospital rules against being in a room with a patient alone and instead sneak in and sexually assault the Guatemalan immigrant.

The appeals court allowed as how the hospital might have had no way to know he would do that after the patient was admitted in 2008, but then added that's not where the potential negligence lay. Instead, the court ruled, the hospital was potentially negligent because it created the condition where the guy could re-enter the room after the woman's doctor and nurse left her room:

The question should not have been whether [the interpreter]'s specific assault was foreseeable based on his prior conduct, but rather whether an assault on an unattended, minimally clothed patient was foreseeable when her room door was unlocked, open, and unmonitored, and unauthorized hospital employees had access to it. The hospital's policy regarding interpreters being alone with patients makes it clear that such harm was foreseeable. Thus, the question whether the hospital met its duty of reasonable care still remains a genuine issue of material fact for the jury to decide.

Because of that, the court re-instated the couple's suit and sent it back to Superior Court for trial.

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Comments

The court's standard for "forseeable" is anything that could happen in an episode of Criminal Minds, where a potential serial killer-rapist is lurking behind every commercial break.

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Did you read the complaint, genius? Thomas Consoli assaulted someone at 9:15 am and was allowed to assault the complaintant at 3:15 pm.
Do you allow stick up for perverts as a matter of course?

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