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Johnson v. New York City Health and Hospitals Corp.6/18/1998
Plaintiff appeals from a judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Ira Gammerman, J.), entered December 2, 1996, which, upon a jury verdict, awarded judgment in favor of defendants.
Plaintiff Eric A. Johnson brought a wrongful death action seeking damages for defendants' negligence in failing to provide minimal security to protect his wife, Dr. Kathryn Hinnant, a pathologist at Bellevue Hospital Center ("Bellevue"). Dr. Hinnant was murdered and sexually assaulted in her office on Saturday, January 7, 1989 at approximately 4:00 p.m. by Steven Smith, a homeless intruder who had recently been a patient at the hospital.
This appeal seeks to overturn a judgment in favor of defendant New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation ("HHC") following post-trial denial of plaintiff's motion to set aside the jury verdict as against the weight of the evidence. The jury found, by a vote of 10 to 2, that HHC's security measures were reasonable.
The trial evidence showed that at the time in question, Bellevue, a 1,000 bed public hospital in New York City with approximately 4,000 employees, had a mandate "to provide the best care to anyone regardless of their ability to pay". It treated many patients with antisocial personality disorders stemming from problems such as drug use or domestic violence. It had over 100 clinics and logged over 300,000 total clinic visits in 1988-89. The psychiatric walk-in clinic logged over 30,000 annual visits, the emergency room about 100,000 visits. There were approximately 300 beds for psychiatric patients. There was also an adjoining 1,000 bed homeless shelter run by the NYC Human Resources Administration.
The hospital center's enormous physical plant encompassed approximately one million square feet in several separate buildings with numerous entryways. In the "new" building, where Dr. Hinnant was attacked, each of the 22 floors covered one acre. The new building and an adjacent building shared a huge basement area that contained laundry, storage and maintenance facilities as well as the morgue. There was also a tunnel that connected the basement to the basement of the homeless shelter.
The hospital's security system at the time employed 65 to 70 security officers. They were deployed in both uniform and plainclothes, at fixed posts and in roving patrols, in three shifts around the clock throughout the hospital grounds. The officers meticulously recorded all security-related incidents in a security log, relevant portions of which were entered into evidence. The tunnel between the hospital and the homeless shelter was secured by an around-the-clock, manned security post at the top of a ramp leading into the shelter. Also, there were pull-down gates at either end of the tunnel which were lowered on weekends and at night; whenever the gate was up at the shelter end, a Bellevue security officer was stationed there. The tunnel gates could not be closed at all times because of the volume of legitimate traffic between the hospital and the shelter. As a practical matter, the concern with security had to be balanced against the need for access and movement of patients, visitors and hospital staff.
One noteworthy security problem was the employees' habit of taping or jamming stairwell doors open to permit easy access between floors, since the elevators were slow. Employees persisted in this habit despite constant instructions to cease. Security personnel were placed on notice of the problem and were directed to constantly look out for it, rectify it if possible and if not, to note the need for repair in an incident report to maintenance and in their memo books.
Hospital policy as to intruders required employee
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