Rhoda v. Aroostook General Hospital
| Decision Date | 20 February 1967 |
| Citation | 226 A.2d 530 |
| Parties | Helen RHODA v. AROOSTOOK GENERAL HOSPITAL and Viola DeFalco. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
Errol K. Paine, Bangor, for plaintiff.
Brown, Wathen, O'Connor, Choate, Lund & Finn, by Robert W. O'Connor, Augusta, for defendants.
Before WILLIAMSON, C. J., and WEBBER, TAPLEY, MARDEN and DUFRESNE, JJ.
On report. The plaintiff's alleged cause of action arose from the following admitted history. On May 21, 1960 the plaintiff fell and fractured her left leg when she slipped on the floor at home. While she was a paying patient of the corporate defendant at the Aroostook General Hospital, the broken bone of her leg was reunited by surgical operation, a metal pin being implanted in her hip. Prior to her final discharge from the hospital with her left leg three inches shorter than her right leg, she was required to undergo three additional operations. Plaintiff alleges that the 3 additional operations and her resulting leg impairment and deformity were occasioned by the negligence of the corporate defendant and its employees, and that the defendant, Aroostook General Hospital, was answerable in damages to her because of the negligence of the corporation itself as distinguished from the negligence of its employees. The specific corporate negligence is averred in manner as follows:
'That Plaintiff's injuries and damage described in Paragraph 15 were caused as a direct and proximate result of the negligent, reckless and careless failure of the Aroostook General Hospital to properly select qualified employers, to properly train its employees, and to adequately supervise and control its employees.'
It is conceded that the corporate defendant is a charitable institution. The defendant's motion to dismiss on the ground of charitable immunity was granted. The plaintiff appeals from said ruling.
The parties couched the issue in the following terms: does the non-liability rule of charitable immunity extend to shelter the corporate charity from liability for its own corporate negligent acts as it does for the negligence of its servants? We answer that the corporate charity is fully immune from liability and deny the appeal.
As recently as 1963, we rejected strong suggestions for us to reconsider and overrule the charitable immunity rule adopted in 1910 in Jensen v. Maine E. & E. Infirmary, 107 Me. 408, 78 A. 898, 33 L.R.A., N.S., 141, and we did this in clear and unambiguous language: 'We are satisfied that if the doctrine of charitable immunity from tort liability were to be abolished in Maine, such a far reaching change in policy should be initiated in the Legislature and receive careful legislative consideration.' Mendall v. Pleasant Mountain Ski Development, Inc., 159 Me. 285, 191 A.2d 633. In Mendall, we neither broadened nor narrowed the rule but held that the defendant organization which received and administered virtually no charitable gifts or donations was not within the class of beneficiaries of the charitable immunity doctrine.
The Legislature, in 1965 and 1966 (P.L. 1965, c. 383, Special Session 1966, c. 513 §§ 27, 28) did consider the charitable immunity doctrine, but, instead of abolishing it as it might have if it wished to change the policy developed under the doctrine, it merely modified it to the extent of permitting recovery of damages to an amount not exceeding the limits of insurance coverage which the charity might be carrying at the time of the negligent or tortious act.
Such legislative adoption is additional reason for our continued adherence to the charitable immunity...
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...addressed corporate negligence, three have held that the charitable immunity doctrine bars a patient's recovery. See Rhoda v. Aroostook Gen. Hosp., 226 A.2d 530 (Me.1967); Hill v. Leigh Mem. Hosp., 204 Va. 501, 132 S.E.2d 411 (1963); Grant v. Touro Infirmary, 254 La. 204, 223 So.2d 148 (196......
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...for charitable immunity has been severely criticized. Thompson v. Mercy Hosp., 483 A.2d 706, 708 (Me.1984); Rhoda v. Aroostook Gen. Hosp., 226 A.2d 530, 532 (Me. 1967). This criticism has been explained in the Restatement (Second) of [T]here has been resort to ideas of "public policy" for t......
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...for the conventional theories on the manner in which governmental immunity became a part of the common law.6 See Rhoda v. Aroostook General Hospital, 226 A.2d 530 (Me.1967).7 The 107th Maine Legislature, for example, passed six such resolves in 1975. Resolves, 1975, ch. 7, ch. 9, ch. 12, ch......
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Managed Care, Utilization Review, and Financial Risk Shifting: Compensating Patients for Health Care Cost Containment Injuries
...hospital immunity in United States). 231. See generally Hinden and Elden, supra note 97 at 26-27. But see Rhoda v. Aroostook Gen. Hosp., 226 A.2d 530 (Me. 1967) (holding that the nonliability rule of charitable immunity extends to shelter a hospital corporate charity from liability for its ......