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Rinaldi v. City View Nursing & Rehabilitation Center12/1/2005
{ } Defendant-appellant, City View Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, Inc. ("City View"), appeals from the judgment of the trial court which ordered it to produce certain documents to plaintiff-appellee, Anthony Rinaldi ("Rinaldi"), administrator of the estate of Hilda Lance. We affirm.
{ } On October 28, 2003, Rinaldi commenced this action on behalf of the decedent, Hilda Lance, against City View, the facility where Lance resided for many years prior to her untimely death on August 30, 2001. As alleged in Rinaldi's complaint, City View had noted Lance's medical history of dementia, loss of memory, wandering behaviors, the asking of repetitive questions, and exhibition of poor insight into her own health condition. She was confined by City View to the fourth floor of its facility, which housed residents with dementia, impaired memory or impaired cognition. City's View's care plan for Lance identified the need for her to wear a monitoring device ("wanderguard") at all times. Lance had a history of suffering falls at City View's facility and required assistance with daily living functions.
{ } As further alleged in the complaint, at about 5:30 p.m. on August 30, 2001, City View's staff lost track of Lance, who had been permitted to wander the facility without supervision or a monitoring device. She was eventually found at the bottom of a stairwell between the third and fourth floors in a pool of blood with fatal head, brain and spinal cord injuries.
{ } The complaint further alleged that Lance's next of kin, who lived out of state, were never informed that she had been left unattended and found dead in a stairwell. Approximately two months after Lance's death, on October 31, 2001, Lance's elderly sister, Roberta Johns, learned for the first time, when she received a copy of the final death certificate, that Lance had suffered blunt force trauma to her head with brain and spinal cord injuries as the cause of her death. The heirs did not learn that Lance's death was caused by a fall down a full flight of stairs until September 2003.
{ } Rinaldi commenced suit shortly thereafter, asserting claims for negligence, violation of the Nursing Home Bill of Rights as set forth in R.C. Chapter 3721, fraud, and wrongful death. In light of City View's subsequent inexplicable inability to produce Lance's complete medical chart, Rinaldi later filed an amended complaint adding a claim for spoliation of evidence.
{ } The trial court subsequently denied City View's motion to dismiss on statute of limitations grounds. Both parties filed motions for summary judgment; the trial court stayed ruling on the motions pending on-going discovery. { } During the course of discovery, Rinaldi requested that City View identify, via a privilege log, all of the documents that City View had withheld from discovery. After reviewing the privilege log, Rinaldi demanded production of certain of the documents City View had identified as privileged. By agreement of counsel for both parties, City View subsequently submitted its privilege log and the disputed documents to the trial court for an in camera inspection. City View identified items A through E, G and H of the log, respectively, as "Investigation Report-Form," "Investigation Report-Narrative," "Investigation Report Conclusion-Narrative," "Supervisor's Monitor Accident/Incident Report dated August 30, 2001," "Employee Written Incident Statements for August 30, 2001," "Accident/incident Report & Resident Fall Investigation Reports," and "Falls Committee Notes: March 1999."
{ } In a subsequent journal entry, the trial court ordered City View to produce all of the documents identified in the privilege log to Rinal
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