The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to review a case against the Ohio State University Medical Center clarifying the standard of care that the Ohio Patient’s Bill of Rights provides patients in Ohio psychiatric institutions. The case pits a former patient against the OSU-Harding Hospital and concerns assault on Marlene Campbell on Nov. 16, 1999, that caused Campbell to lose an eye.
Campbell, in a phone interview with The Lantern, said that she and Jessica Salvatore, another patient at Harding Hospital, were left alone in a room when Salvatore suddenly lunged, struck and kicked her and dragged her across the floor, pulling out her hair.
An emergency squad transferred Campbell first to Mt. Carmel Hospital, where the surgeons available were not qualified to operate on her eye, and then to Grant Hospital for emergency surgery, she said.
The kicks left Campbell’s right eye so severely damaged that on Dec. 27, 1999, it was completely removed in the third surgical procedure following the attack, Campbell said.
Weeks later, when Campbell was able to collect her wits, Campbell’s attorney told her that Salvatore had attacked another patient the day before her attack on Campbell, she said.
Five days before, Salvatore purportedly started a house fire in which Salvatore’s grandfather died, according to court records.
In addition, Campbell learned that Harding Hospital claimed it was immune from responsibility.
“The hospital said it was not their fault,” said Campbell, 58, of Gahanna. “It was the ugliest thing I had ever heard.”
Campbell, who was born and raised in Bermuda and became a U.S. citizen in 1998, said she is “worn out by it all.”
“I have to take my (prosthetic) eye in and out every day,” she said. “Every day I am reminded.”
Campbell sued the hospital in the Ohio Court of Claims on Nov. 21, 2002. The OSU Medical Center bought Harding Hospital on Sept. 1, 1999 and the Court of Claims is the only court permitted to award damages against a state-owned institution in Ohio.
In her complaint, Campbell said the hospital was negligent in not isolating or monitoring Salvatore more closely and thereby causing Campbell “permanent disfigurement and disability … pain and suffering and mental anguish.” The Ohio Bill of Patient’s Rights guarantees that a patient “shall be given reasonable protection from assault or battery by any other person,” Campbell’s complaint said.
In its response to Campbell’s complaint, the hospital said it was immune from responsibility unless “an explicit threat of inflicting imminent and serious physical harm, or death, by (Salvatore) against Marlene Campbell” had been communicated to the hospital staff prior to the attack. The hospital relied on a statute passed by the Ohio legislature two months before the altercation that provided immunity, under certain circumstances, to psychiatric institutions and practitioners, according to court documents.
On Dec. 19, 2003, the Court of Claims ruled in favor of Harding Hospital. On Nov. 16, 2004, the Court of Appeals of Ohio, 10th Appellate District, also ruled in favor of Harding.
The appellate court, in its decision, recognized that the 1999 statute limiting the hospital’s immunity and the Ohio Patient’s Bill of Rights were “difficult to reconcile or harmonize,” but the court ruled in favor of the hospital.
In March, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to review the 10th District’s decision in Campbell’s case asking for damages in excess of $25,000. Miles Durfey, clerk of the Court of Claims, said that it is traditional for damages to be listed as in excess of $25,000 even if the plaintiff intends to seek much more.
Campbell’s attorney, Lloyd Pierre-Louise of Columbus, said in an e-mail to the Lantern that, given the hospital’s knowledge of Salvatore’s violent history, it was “not reasonable” for the hospital to permit Salvatore to be alone and unsupervised with Campbell.
If the Supreme Court rules in Campbell’s favor, “it will mean that the Patient’s Bill of Rights still has some teeth … It will mean that the bar hasn’t been raised to a level where no Ohioan can vindicate their rights under the Patient’s Bill of Rights, Pierre-Louise said.
“If Campbell is unsuccessful, even if a patient is raped by a hospital employee, they could not sue unless the hospital knew that the employee made an explicit threat against a specific person,” Pierre-Louise said.
“If a patient beat up another patient the day before, the standard of care is absurd,” he said.
Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro is representing the hospital.
“Obviously, the facts in the case are no doubt gut wrenching,” said Mark Anthony, spokesman for the attorney general’s office. “But we have to follow the law. Our position is that plain language of the law. I’ll let the 10th District decision speak for itself.”
He referred additional inquiries to the law and the decision of the court of appeals but concurred with Pierre-Louise that the level of protection provided by the Ohio Patient’s Bill of Rights is the issue the Supreme Court has agreed to decide.
Pleadings can be filed with the Supreme Court for up to 90 days following the court’s agreement to review a case, said Dennis Whalen, a spokesman for the court. Following the pleading process, the court can decide the case, with or without oral arguments, on any schedule the court chooses, he said. The court decides 150-200 cases per year.
In a separate action in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, on July 29, 2003, Campbell filed suit against Salvatore for damages in excess of $25,000. Salvatore replied, without an attorney, from the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility where she was incarcerated and earning $10 per month.
In her hand-written response in the court’s case file, Salvatore said that she was “remorseful of my actions but, at the time, was not even competent to feel remorse.” She was not attacking Campbell but a “delusional character that I had made of Ms. Campbell in my own mind,” she wrote.
“My actions were outrageous and shocking and I am sorry for the pain I have inflicted is permanent. It is a terrible mistake and tragedy,” she wrote. “Ms. Campbell deserves to be recompensened (sic). I could never, however, pay her back what she truly deserves. I would not have been able to cope with the loss of an eye if the tables would have been turned.”
A Franklin County magistrate found in favor of Campbell and issued a $700,000 judgment against Salvatore – money Campbell expects never to be paid, Pierre-Louise said.
