Discovery: Health System Ordered to Produce Risk Management Policies and Procedures, Make Employees Available for Deposition, in Case Alleging Nurse Sexually Assaulted Patients

​In a U.S. district court in Florida, the plaintiff sued a health system, a hospital the health system owned and operated, and a male nurse it employed, alleging violations of the plaintiff's civil rights under federal law (42 USC § 1983) and tort claims of negligence; negligent hiring, supervision, and retention; and assault and battery. The plaintiff, a former patient at the health system, claimed that the health system showed deliberate indifference to her and deprived her of her constitutional rights by its policy of failing to supervise the defendant nurse, and through its policy of not making reasonable investigations into other patients' reports that the same nurse had sexually abused and assaulted them.

The plaintiff claimed that the nurse sexually assaulted her during her hospital admission in July 2016 and that he had assaulted another female patient at the hospital in 2015. She claimed that the victim of the alleged 2015 assault had filed a police report and informed the hospital and its management that the defendant nurse had sexually assaulted her and that the health system, as the nurse's employer, failed to properly investigate, discipline, terminate, or require additional training or supervision of the defendant nurse, or limit his access to female patients' hospital rooms. The plaintiff sought monetary damages from the defendants to compensate for her mental...