Lindroth v. Christ Hospital

• Citation: 21 N.J. 588,123 A.2d 10
• Decision Date: 04 June 1956
• Docket Number: No. A--151,A--151
• Parties: Lawrence V. LINDROTH, M.D., Plaintiff-Respondent, v. CHRIST HOSPITAL, a corporation of New Jersey, Defendant-Appellant, and Elevator Engineering Co., Inc., Defendant.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

Page 588

21 N.J. 588

123 A.2d 10

Lawrence V. LINDROTH, M.D., Plaintiff-Respondent, v. CHRIST HOSPITAL, a corporation of New Jersey, Defendant-Appellant and Elevator Engineering Co., Inc., Defendant.

No. A--151.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued May 14, 1956.

Decided June 4, 1956.

James P. Beggans, Jersey City, for appellant (Carpenter, Bennett, Beggans & Morrissey, Jersey City, attorneys; Elmer J. Bennett, Milton A. Dauber and Richard H. Hughes, Jersey City, on the brief).

David M. Klausner, Jersey City, for respondent.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

WILLIAM J. BRENNAN, Jr., J.

The decisions of the New Jersey courts presently confer an immunity upon charitable organizations and enterprises from liability in negligence to injured persons who are beneficiaries of their benefactions, but do not confer such immunity when the injured persons are strangers thereto.

Plaintiff suffered injuries from a fall in an elevator of defendant, Christ Hospital, a private charitable hospital, when the elevator malfunctioned due to the hospital's negligence. The hospital moved at the end of the case for a judgment in its favor upon the ground that the proofs showed as a matter of law that plaintiff was a beneficiary of the hospital's charity. The motion was denied and the jury was instructed to find upon the proofs whether the plaintiff's relation to the hospital was that of beneficiary or of stranger. The jury returned a verdict of $50,000 in plaintiff's favor. The hospital moved to set the verdict aside as excessive, and the motion was denied. The hospital appealed to the Appellate Division, alleging error in both actions of the trial court, and we certified the appeal here on our own motion.

The protection of charitable organizations from liability in damages for otherwise just claims arising from their negligence is losing support throughout the country. In the recently published second edition of his handbook on the law of torts Dean Prosser comments that the law conferring this immunity 'is undergoing rapid change,' largely influenced by the 1942 decision of the late Mr. Justice Rutledge in President and Directors of Georgetown College v. Hughes, 76 U.S.App.D.C. 123, 130 F.2d 810 (App.D.C.1942), written while the Justice was a judge of the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. That 'devastating opinion,' says Dean Prosser, 'reviewed all of the arguments in favor of the immunity and demolished them so completely as to change the course of the law,' and was followed by 'a flood of recent decisions holding that a charity is liable for its torts to the same extent as any other defendant.' The Dean lists 17 jurisdictions in addition to the District of Columbia where the immunity was formerly recognized and has now been repudiated. He concludes, 'The immunity of charities is clearly in full retreat.' Prosser, Law of Torts (2d ed. 1955), pp. 787, 789.

The plaintiff meets the hospital's attack upon the trial judge's denial of the motion for judgment by suggesting that New Jersey should be added to the list of jurisdictions repudiating immunity.

But the plaintiff is not a beneficiary of the hospital's benefactions and the hospital's attempt to interpose the cloak of immunity to defeat his claim cannot succeed. We therefore prefer to await an action squarely presenting the issue before deciding the proposition urged by the plaintiff.

Such immunity as exists under our cases originated 31 years ago with the decision of our former Court of Errors and Appeals in D'Amato v. Orange Memorial Hospital, 101 N.J.L. 61, 127 A. 340 (E. & A.1925). There recovery was denied a patient of a charitable hospital for injuries suffered when she fell from a chair due to the negligence of a nurse who was transferring her from the chair to a bed. Patients were also denied recoveries in the more recent decisions in Woods v. Overlook Hospital Ass'n, 6 N.J.Super. 47, 69 A.2d 742 (App.Div.1949); and Rafferzeder v. Raleigh, etc., Memorial Hospital, 33 N.J.Super. 19, 109 A.2d 296 (App.Div.1954), although both opinions stated that the results were reached because the intermediate appellate court believed it was not at liberty to depart from the law laid down in the D'Amato case however contrary that law was to the impressive weight of authority elsewhere.

The limited scope of the immunity recognized by our decisions is best evidenced by the cases decided after D'Amato. The immunity was held to protect a private charitable hospital from liability to a mother injured while visiting her daughter at a hospital, Boeckel v. Orange Memorial Hospital, 108 N.J.L. 453, 158 A. 832 (Sup.Ct.1932), affirmed 110 N.J.L. 509, 166 A. 146 (E. & A.1933); another charitable hospital from liability to a student nurse receiving nursing instructions there Casper v. Cooper Hospital, 26 N.J.Super. 535, 98 A.2d 605 (App.Div.1953); a church from liability to a student injured by a fellow pupil while both were in attendance at a church parochial school, Jones v. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, 7 N.J. 533, 82 A.2d 187 (1951), and a church from liability to a girl scout injured while attending a scout meeting in the church hall, Bianchi v. South Park Presbyterian Church, 123 N.J.L. 325, 8 A.2d 567, 124 A.L.R. 808 (E. & A.1939). But the immunity was not a barrier protecting from tort liability a hospital sued by a member of a volunteer first aid squad injured at the hospital after bringing a patient into the hospital, Kolb v. Monmouth Memorial Hospital, 116 N.J.L. 118, 182 A. 822 (E. & A.1936); hospitals sued by persons injured by the negligent operation of hospital vehicles on public highways, Daniels v. Rahway Hospital, 160 A. 644, 10 N.J.Misc. 585 (C.P.1932), Matthews v. Monmouth Memorial Hospital, 131 N.J.L. 472, 37 A.2d 33 (E. & A.1944); a church sued in like circumstances, Simmons v. Wiley M. E. Church, 112 N.J.L. 129, 170 A. 237 (E. & A.1934); a hospital sued by a private nurse injured on hospital property while practicing her profession in the pay of a patient at the hospital, Rose v. Raleigh Fitkin-Paul Morgan, etc., Foundation, 136 N.J.L. 553, 57 A.2d 29 (E. & A.1948); a church sued for injuries suffered in a church hall by a paying patron at a church social event, Jewell v. St. Peter's Parish, 10 N.J.Super. 229, 76 A.2d 917 (Cty.Ct.1950).

The determinant whether the injured party's otherwise just tort claim against the charity may be defeated by an assertion of immunity from liability therefor is whether the person is one of the 'recipients of the benefactions,' one of the 'beneficiaries of the charitable institution,' rather than a person "unconcerned in and unrelated to that which the donor brought into being or supports in operations," Rose v. Raleigh Fitkin-Paul Morgan, etc., Foundation, supra, 136 N.J.L. at page 555, 57 A.2d at page 30. Phrased otherwise in that opinion (136 N.J.L. at page 556, 57 A.2d at page 31), the inquiry is whether the injured person was at the time of the mishap 'a beneficiary of the charity in the legal sense' or 'a stranger to the charity.' The plaintiff in that case was a graduate nurse of the hospital's nursing school and for that reason was among those listed upon the nurses' registry of the hospital which gave perference of employment to its graduates. Her employment for the hospital patient she was attending, at $49 per week paid by the patient, was the result of a call to the case made by the hospital's director of nurses from the nurses' registry. It was argued that her association with the hospital was therefore advantageous to her, so that she fell within the category of a beneficiary of the hospital's charity. The argument was rejected. It was held that if it was 'of advantage to the nurse to be on the registry, it was perhaps of more advantage to the hospital to have nursing service available,' particularly at that time of a shortage of nurses during the war years.

The plaintiff here was also a 'stranger' to the charity of the defendant hospital. Indeed, this so fully appears from the uncontradicted facts that we question the trial judge's submission of the issue to the jury; at all events, the judge was clearly right in denying the hospital's motion for judgment in its favor.

The plaintiff is a surgeon on the hospital's staff. His connection with the hospital dates from his graduation from medical school in 1928. He served at the hospital progressively as an interne resident surgeon, assistant attendant in surgery, and since 1936 an attending surgeon and head of a surgery division. His surgical services to ward patients throughout these many years have been given without fee. By contrast, charges to such patients for other hospital services are paid to the hospital in whole or in part by the patients, or through hospitalization insurance or by public bodies. But plaintiff's free medical services to indigent hospital patients are not the only services he has rendered the hospital in furtherance of its mission to care for, nurture and maintain the sick, infirm, aged and indigent. Also advantageous to the furtherance of that end have been his services in various administrative capacities. He has been president of the medical staff, a medical advisory board member, from time to time chairman of various staff committees, and a co-director of the hospital's cancer service. And because since 1939 he has held a degree as a member of the American College of Surgeons h...