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Oliveaux v. St. Francis Medical Center12/15/2004
Monroe Police Department. Allison said she was not at home when the accident occurred; Duncan gave a slightly different account of the chest-of-drawers incident. Ms. Pace and Det. Zeigler then went to Allison and Duncan's apartment on Copley Street and examined the chest of drawers. Det. Zeigler noted that the bottom drawer was "cocked" just as Duncan had said, and felt that this corroborated the story. Finding that the injuries could have been accidental, he did not pursue criminal charges.
On December 4, Haley was discharged from St. Francis; she spent a few days with her grandparents, the Laytons, and then returned to Allison and Duncan.
The following Monday, December 6, Ms. Pace interviewed Haley's grandmother, Julie Layton, and a daycare operator, Cathy Reed, and concluded she did not have enough evidence to substantiate a claim of child abuse. She did not call another daycare operator, Debra Craighead, whose name Allison had provided. On December 8, she sent a request to St. Francis for Haley's medical records. These showed that Haley had been admitted to the emergency room three times in the preceding month; however, CPS did not receive the records until December 17. By that time, Ms. Pace and her supervisor, Linda Foster, had invalidated the case for unspecified physical abuse.
On Saturday, December 18, an ambulance carried Haley to the emergency room of Glenwood Regional Medical Center in West Monroe, with the report that she had drowned in a bathtub. When she arrived she was blue and could not be revived. After she was pronounced dead, doctors noticed that her anus and rectum were abnormally distended. Dr. Norwood, director of the emergency room, testified that she had multiple tears and scars, some fresh and some older, suggesting that she had been sexually abused over a period of time. The coroner, Dr. Hayne, confirmed the presence of injuries but did not feel that any were "old."
Oliveaux filed this wrongful death and survival action in December 1994 against Duncan, St. Francis and CPS. Oliveaux was killed in a train accident in late 1996, and his sister was substituted as party plaintiff. By amended petitions, Oliveaux added Dr. Perkins as a defendant and dismissed Duncan, noting the latter had been convicted of capital murder in Haley's death and was on death row. The matter proceeded to an eight-day jury trial in December 2003.
In response to a special verdict form, the jury declined to find (1) that any employee of CPS was grossly negligent and that this gross negligence was a cause of Haley's injuries; (2) that Dr. Perkins breached the standard of care for pediatricians and that her breach was a cause of Haley's injuries; (3) that the nurses at St. Francis breached the standard of care for nurses, and that their breach was a cause of Haley's injuries; and (4) that any social service worker at St. Francis was negligent and that this negligence was a cause of Haley's injuries. The jury further found that the fault of a non-party was the legal cause of Haley's injuries, assessing that fault at 100%. Finally, the jury found that Dr. Perkins was not an employee of St. Francis at the time of the events in question. The district court signed judgment in due course dismissing all claims.
Oliveaux has appealed, raising five assignments of error. He does not contend that the verdict was plainly wrong; thus the issue of manifest error is not properly preserved for appeal. URCA Rule 1-3; Steed v. St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 31,521, p. 6 (La. App. 2 Cir. 2/24/99), 728 So. 2d 931, 938, writ denied, 99-0877 (La. 5/7/99), 740 So. 2d 1290.
Discussion: Qualified Immunity
By his first two assignments of er
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