Jessica Brylo · Eric Rosen
$25 Million Hospital Sex Assault With Horrific Pre-Existing & No Punitive Damages
November 8, 2024 6:30 PM||
This was a case of sexual assault at a hospital. A nurse at the hospital perpetrated the abuse on a 67 year old patient who happened to have an extensive history of sexual abuse. The verdict obtained was $25 million. The claims at trial were negligent supervision, negligent security, and professional negligence. Jessica Brylo and Jennifer LaRue were jury consultants on the case who helped with mock trials, big data, case strategy, and jury selection.
In January of 2021, a 67 year old woman was admitted to HCA Florida Citrus Hospital ER. During her time there, an HCA nurse sexually assaulted her multiple times over a 4 hour period. The nurse had taped a bed pad over the window. The nurse confessed to sexually assaulting our client and was arrested, prosecuted and convicted.
The client never told the nurse to stop or used the call button or called the police. She eventually called a domestic abuse hotline that reported the assault the hospital.
The police were called 6 hours later. In the meantime, our client’s room was moved and the room she was in was cleaned. There was evidence that a nurse in the ER in the area where the incident occurred believed something was going on in the room, but failed to report it.
Several prior instances were excluded by the judge except for a prior assault at the hospital just a few months before our case.
The defense claimed that there was no reason to suspect the nurse would do these things. He was a nurse for 30 years with no prior history of sexual assault allegations and had a clean background check when he was hired. They said there was nothing suspicious about the bed pad taped up over the window since it was around COVID time and the hospital had to take down curtains that were normally in front of the windows for patient privacy due to sanitary problems. So nurses were allowed to improvise to cover the windows using tape, bed pads, pillows and more.
The defense also argued that our client had a history of other instances of abuse and trauma in her life and that she suffered from several mental health disorders and that she was receiving treatment for that up until the incident occurred. They argued her pre incident condition was the same as post incident and that her medical records showed she was back to baseline within 3 months after the incident.
The jury affirmed the hospital’s negligence and valued the client’s suffering at $25 million.
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