Langthorne v. Lopez

31 Mass. L. Rptr. 1
CourtMassachusetts Superior Court
DecidedFebruary 28, 2013
DocketNo. MICV201001369
StatusPublished

This text of 31 Mass. L. Rptr. 1 (Langthorne v. Lopez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Superior Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Langthorne v. Lopez, 31 Mass. L. Rptr. 1 (Mass. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

Wilson, Paul D., J.

INTRODUCTION

This lawsuit arises out of the death of Kathleen Whittier after she left a patient room in the Emergency Department of Emerson Hospital where she had been waiting to be seen by a physician. Plaintiffs, Carmen Langthorne and Stephanie St. Laurence, as administrators of Whittier’s estate, initially filed suit against registered nurses Ann Marie Lopez, Michelle Kewley, and Kathy Marr in April of 2010, alleging negligence. After this court (Connolly, J.) allowed their motion to amend on July 11, 2011, Plaintiffs filed a Second Amended Complaint adding an allegation of vicarious liability against KEMM Care, Inc., a medical staffing company. The matter is now before me on KEMM Care’s motion for summary judgment, which the parties argued on December 13,2012. For the reasons set forth below, I will allow KEMM Care’s motion.

BACKGROUND

The facts, taken in the light most favorable to the nonmoving Plaintiffs, are as follows.

A. Medical Treatment of Whittier

Whittier came to the Emerson Emergency Department at about 12:10 p.m. on January 12, 2009. She reported not feeling well, feeling groggy and very vague, and body tingling “onset 2005.” Kewley was Whittier’s primaiy or attending nurse. At various times during Whittier’s stay, Kewley noted that she had “flat affect[,]” “poor eye contact!,]” and was sleeping in a “fetal position.” However, neither Kewley nor any other Emerson personnel recorded an Emergency Severity Index (“ESI”) rating, fall risk assessment, abuse screening, psychosocial analysis, or current neurological work-up in Whittier’s chart.

Kewley testified that she placed Whittier’s chart on a rack reserved for patients waiting to be seen by a doctor (the “to be seen” rack). At about 3:20 or 3:30 p.m., however, she saw Whittier’s chart on the rack reserved for patients who had already been seen by a doctor (the “room” rack) and remarked to Deborah T. Gobetz, M.D., “that’s not supposed to be there.”

Kewley was familiar with the rules, regulations, and nursing guidelines of the Emergency Department at Emerson, including those concerning the ESI, as well as the protocols involving triage. Once such protocol involved using “to be seen” and “room” racks to keep track of which patients had yet to be seen by a doctor; the charts are supposed to stay in the “to be seen” rack until they are picked up by a physician. Kewley did not know who would have moved Whittier’s chart from the “to be seen” rack, where she claims to have put it, to the “room” rack, where she later found it. At her deposition, Defendant Marr, the Charge Nurse for the Emerson Emergency Department at the relevant time on January 12, 2009, testified that the Charge Nurse had “some responsibility” for the “to be seen” rack, and that it was the Charge Nurse’s responsibility to make sure that patient charts were in the right order.

At some point after placing Whittier in a room in the Emergency Department, Kewley learned that Whittier had left without being seen by a doctor. Whittier’s husband arrived at the Emergency Department after her departure. He told Kewley that Whittier did not have a car and asked where she could be. Kewley suggested that Whittier might have gone to the cafeteria. Sometime later, Whittier’s husband came back to the Emergency Department, saying, “I don’t know where she is.” Kewley told him that the last time she had seen her was in her room, that she had discovered Whittier’s detached IV on the stretcher, and that she assumed Whittier left because she did not want to wait any more. At no time did Kewley report to her superiors or to Emerson security the risk that a patient with Whittier’s symptoms might be wandering outside the hospital without adequate shelter.

[2]*2Although she does not recall (nor does the entry itself state) when, Kewley made a “late entry” to the chart concerning Whittier’s 2005 neurological workup. She does not remember whether the arrival of the police, searching for Whittier later that day, prompted her to make the entry. Whittier was found deceased in a wooded area behind Emerson on the following day, January 13, 2009.

B. KEMM Care, Emerson, and the Contract Documents

KEMM Care is a medical staffing company that places, among other professionals, registered nurses in acute care hospitals and rehabilitation facilities. Throughout the company’s existence, clerical and administrative employees, none of whom have been licensed in any health care profession, have handled the administrative aspects of KEMM Care’s business.

Presently, as in January 2009, KEMM Care’s business model is to enter into staffing agreements with hospitals and rehabilitation facilities (i.e., KEMM Care’s clients), under which KEMM Care agrees to assign temporary workers to perform professional services at the client’s facility, subject to the client’s acceptance of the proposed candidates. In accord with staffing industry custom and practice, all temporary personnel, assigned by KEMM Care to work for its clients, remain on KEMM Care’s payroll and are eligible to receive employment benefits from KEMM Care during their assignments to KEMM Care’s clients. A typical KEMM Care placement ranges from thirteen to twenty-six weeks, with the possibility of extensions. In exchange for the services provided by the workers, KEMM Care receives fees from its clients, from which it pays the workers, overhead, and expenses.

Pursuant to their Staffing Agreement, both KEMM Care and Emerson made various obligations. KEMM Care agreed to supply workers’ compensation insurance and professional liability insurance (with limitations of not less than $ 1 million per claim for personnel submitted) for the temporary “personnel,” “candidates,” or “staff’ it placed at Emerson. KEMM Care also agreed to invoice Emerson for the services provided by these workers, and to remove a candidate at Emerson’s request in the event of documented, unsatisfactory performance after the first week.

Emerson agreed “not to solicit or attempt to hire on a regular, full time basis, any KEMM Care candidate until the completion of the initial contract, as specified in ‘Exhibit A,’ or a minimum of 520 hours worked!,]” and “to hire [a] candidate as a temporary only through KEMM Care, unless 6 months have passed from the time the candidate was presented to [Emerson] or had completed their assignment, which ever comes later.” The Staffing Agreement also required Emerson to designate a staff member to “act as coordinator and to orient KEMM Care candidates to all applicable safety procedures[ ]” and “provide an adequate orientation period for each candidate [as] part of the normal work period.”

In a series of addenda to the Staffing Agreement, KEMM Care and Emerson agreed to multiple placements of Kewley, of varying durations, between November of 2007 and March of 2009, to work “as an Emergency Department Nurse at the direction of the Nursing Supervisory” and that she would be “oriented by an appropriate preceptor.” By these addenda, KEMM Care and Emerson also agreed that “[Kewley] shall be employed by KEMM Care.”

By the Master Candidate Agreement between KEMM Care and Kewley, Kewley agreed that once KEMM Care presented her profile to a client, she would only accept an assignment with that client through KEMM Care, and that she would not accept permanent employment by that client without KEMM Care’s prior written permission.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
31 Mass. L. Rptr. 1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/langthorne-v-lopez-masssuperct-2013.