St. Vincent's Hospital Case

John’s theory of the case:
The hospital was negligent in failing to maintain a safe and supervised environment in the emergency room waiting room where John was located, this failure to provide supervision is the reason he sustained his injury.

Issue:
Does St. Vincent’s Hospital owe John a duty of care?

Rule:
The majority of courts have found that premises owners have a duty to take reasonable precautions to protect their invitees from foreseeable 3rd party attacks. Delta Tau Delta v. Johnson, 712 NE2d 968 (Ind. 1999). Then the court needs to determine if the 3rd party attack in question was indeed foreseeable, there are four tests to do this (i) the specific harm test, (ii) the prior similar incidents test, (iii) the totality of the
Id.

Application:
The specific harm test is most relevant to this situation. This is because, it calls into question whether St. Vincent’s Hospital knew or should have known of the possibility of harm. In this situation, I would argue they did, the one nurse assigned to the emergency room waiting area noticed that the five unattended children were beginning to get too excitable and engaging in horse play.

In an attempt to control the situation, because she foresaw the possibility of it getting out of control, she left the waiting room area in search of more assistance and instructed the children to “stop running and quite down.” After the nurse left, the five unattended children were left with absolutely no one to corral them and they began to engage in even more horse play. It was at this time the John was injured by Tommy one of the unattended children left in the emergency room.
If the nurse had called someone to come and aid her in maintaining the peace in the waiting room rather than leaving the area to accomplish the same task, John may never had been
Either the party was in the zone of danger or out of the zone of danger. If the injured party was out of the zone of danger there are three requirements they still must meet, in order to collect damages. These requirements are (i)the physically injured party must be in the immediate family, (ii)the injury must be severe, and (iii) severe emotional distress. Trombetta v. Conkling, 82 NY2d 549 [1993].

Application:
The court will need to address each of these aforementioned requirements and see if Max’s claim fits within the parameters. The physically injured party must be in the immediate family, will likely be uncontested as the injured party was his son.

The injury must be severe, this is where Max and St. Vincent’s Hospital are going to have a debate on his claim. Was the injury severe enough to warrant a claim for emotional trauma. John was knocked down in the emergency room while awaiting treatment for a preexisting condition. The fall required john to get 30 stiches, we are not sure of the location of the stiches but john is under 2 years old so that is relatively substantial.

The last requirement is that the emotional trauma be verified, this can be done through a therapist or physiatrist, to ensure that the emotional pain is a real complaint.