Roettger v. United Hospitals of St. Paul, Inc.

Decision Date04 February 1986
Docket NumberNo. C4-85-1283,C4-85-1283
Citation380 N.W.2d 856
PartiesThomas C. ROETTGER and Diane D. Roettger, Respondents, v. UNITED HOSPITALS OF ST. PAUL, INC., Appellant.
CourtMinnesota Court of Appeals

Syllabus by the Court

1. The evidence was sufficient to create a jury question regarding the adequacy and reasonableness of appellant's security procedures.

2. The jury's verdict that the hospital's negligent provision of security was the direct cause of the respondent patient's injuries was not contrary to the evidence.

3. The jury's award of damages was supported by the evidence.

Charles Mertensotto, Rowland & Mertensotto, St. Paul, for respondents.

David C. Hutchinson, Geraghty, O'Loughlin & Kenney, St. Paul, for appellant.

Heard, considered and decided by POPOVICH, C.J., and PARKER and RANDALL, JJ.

OPINION

PARKER, Judge.

This is a negligence action arising from an incident where respondent Diane Roettger was assaulted by a third-party trespasser while an inpatient at appellant United Hospitals of St. Paul, Inc. The jury returned a verdict awarding Diane Roettger $300,000 and her husband, respondent Thomas Roettger, $22,500. United's motion for a new trial or judgment notwithstanding the verdict was denied by the trial court. United appeals, contending that the jury's verdict and damage award were not supported by the evidence. We affirm.

FACTS

United Hospitals is a large urban medical complex located in the west end of downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. United's physical plant consists of about 700,000 square feet and in excess of 2,100 rooms. On April 16, 1983, Diane Roettger was admitted into the hospital because she was in labor; her daughter was born the next day.

At about 2:00 a.m. on April 19, 1983, Diane Roettger was alone in her room on the second floor of the hospital. Two floors above, Merle Sue Green and Barbara A. Godes were attempting to sleep in a visitor's lounge. They were at the hospital because their father was seriously ill. Green opened her eyes and noticed a man in the area who was very nervous and couldn't sit still.

After he smoked about three cigarettes, he came up behind Green and tapped her on the shoulder. He told her that a doctor wanted to speak to her in a tunnel leading to Children's Hospital. Green detected the smell of liquor on the man's breath. He walked into the tunnel and appeared to be waiting for her. She did not move. He then walked back into the lounge, sat down and smoked another cigarette. Green woke her sister, Godes, who got up and walked to the nurse's station to inform them about this man who was acting strangely. The man then entered the down elevator and was gone.

It took Godes about four minutes to talk to the nurses and get back to the lounge. Green testified that the security officers came soon after Godes had gone to the nurse's station. While the security person was talking to Green and Godes, he was beeped on his walkie-talkie and paged to go down to the second floor because a disturbance had been reported.

Diane Roettger had been sitting in bed when a man came into her room. He walked around the drape and said, "Oh, excuse me," and then turned around and appeared to leave. She thought he had left, so she turned off her light, but as she did so she heard a sound like a chair moving. She turned her light back on and discovered that the man was still in her room. She asked, "Did your wife just have a baby?" He replied, "Yes," and she asked, "What did she have?" The man said, "A boy." Diane Roettger then sat back in her bed. She could not see the man because the drape was still drawn. She then asked, "How much did the baby weigh?" He said, "Seven ounces." The man then said, "Would you mind if I shut the door? My wife's outside talking to her mother and it's making me real tense." She replied, "No, I wish you wouldn't." She then picked up the telephone beside her bed, and as she picked it up it made a ringing sound.

Moments later, the man came around the drape, leaped spread-eagle, and landed on her. They fell from the bed to the floor. She screamed as the man hit her in the face several times. He put his hand around her neck and she had trouble breathing. She estimated she was hit about 20 times in the face. She was lying flat on her back on the floor with the man straddling her and hitting her head against the floor. She thought the attacker was trying to kill her.

Two nurses then entered the room and pulled the man off. The man ran and escaped from the hospital. Diane Roettger was hysterical. The area around her left eye was badly bruised and swollen, there were marks on her neck, and an earring had been pulled out of her left ear. A cut in her eyebrow required stitches and has left a small scar.

The parties stipulated that the assailant was Charles R. Brown, who is presently committed to St. Peter State Hospital. He was arrested on April 19, 1983, at the Union Gospel Mission and charged with first-degree assault. There is no evidence of how or when Brown entered the hospital prior to the assault.

Brown had been seen inside United at least three times prior to this incident. On December 23, 1982, it was reported that at 4:30 p.m. Brown had been warned to leave the hospital. The security officer's report said, "I believe Brown is a thief and has been stealing from the hospital for the past several months. If found on hospital property he should be arrested." On January 10, 1983, at 9 p.m. Brown had been warned "to stay out of the hospital." On February 10, 1983, nursing personnel at Children's Hospital informed security officers that someone had been sleeping in unoccupied patient rooms. At 10:15 p.m. on February 11, 1983, Brown was watching television in a visitor's lounge on the fourth floor of the hospital. The security officer's report said, "This is the party mentioned by Children's as sleeping in the hospital the past few nights." Brown was arrested for trespassing and transported to police headquarters by a squad car.

At trial United produced the testimony of Lieutenant Jerry McDonald, a 30-year veteran of the St. Paul Police Department and head of security at United; and Richard Hundt, who has been chief of security at Hennepin County Medical Center for seven and a half years. Both offered their opinions that the security procedures and practices at United were adequate and reasonable. McDonald testified that after evening visiting hours were over, two of the hospital's three night security officers were assigned to positions outside the hospital. This left only one officer to cover United's eight floors. The officer on duty did not patrol above the first floor of the hospital between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m. on the morning of April 19, 1983.

Although visitors Green and Godes stayed in the fourth floor lounge almost every night for several weeks after February 15, 1983, they had no recollection of seeing any security officer in the lounge area during the nights they were there. McDonald testified that trespassing arrests of persons other than Brown had been made in the months before April 1983. The monthly security reports prior to April 1983 included incidents of trespass, theft, and undesirable conduct of persons within the hospital. However, McDonald testified that before April 19, 1983, he was unaware of any incident during the 17 years he had been associated with hospital security in which an intruder such as Brown had assaulted a patient.

Diane Roettger testified that upon returning home she was frightened, insecure, and unable to stay alone as a result of the attack. She was diagnosed by medical experts of both parties as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The medical experts did not agree on the prognosis and proper course of treatment for her anxiety.

ISSUES

1. Did the trial court err in refusing to direct a verdict regarding the adequacy and reasonableness of United's security procedures?

2. Does the evidence support the jury's verdict that United's negligence was the direct cause of respondent's injuries?

3. Was the jury's damage award supported by the evidence?

DISCUSSION
I

United acknowledges it had a duty to exercise reasonable care. In Sylvester v. Northwestern Hospital of Minneapolis, 236 Minn. 384, 53 N.W.2d 17 (1952), a patient sued a hospital for failing to protect him from injuries caused by the violence of another patient who was intoxicated. The trial court directed a verdict for the defendant hospital. The supreme court reversed, holding that the hospital had a duty of reasonable care, measured by the vulnerability of the patient and the foreseeability of the danger:

A private hospital, although it is not an insurer of the safety of a patient, must exercise such reasonable care for the protection and well-being of a patient as his known physical and mental condition requires or as is required by his condition as it ought to be known to the hospital in the exercise of ordinary care. As to the danger of self-injury or as to the danger reasonably to be anticipated from the acts of another person under the hospital's control, the reasonable care to be exercised must always be in proportion to the patient's inability to look after his own safety. The standard of reasonable care is that which would be exercised by a reasonably prudent person under the same or similar circumstances and does not require the taking of precautionary measures to avert a danger which a reasonable person would not anticipate as likely to happen.

Id. at 386, 53 N.W.2d at 19 (footnotes omitted).

United argues that it was entitled to a directed verdict because the Roettgers failed to introduce any expert opinion that the hospital had negligently failed to provide adequate security procedures. The Roettgers called a witness who testified on the availability and function of various security devices on the market. However, the trial court ruled that the witness was not competent to give an expert opinion on the ultimate...

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