The family of a former nursing home patient cannot sue the facility or a doctor there for discharging her while a COVID-19 test was pending, even though she soon passed the virus onto her husband, who died.
The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey on Wednesday dismissed the case brought against Woodcliff Health & Rehabilitation Center, which the plaintiffs argued had a duty to keep patient Selva Campbell on site until staff knew the results of an April 2020 PCR test.
But the court called those claims “problematic,” recalling that in the early days of the pandemic, little was known about how the virus spread or how to significantly reduce risk.
“Leaving aside the ramifications of detaining a patient in a medical facility solely because she is a potential carrier of an infectious or communicable disease, delaying Mrs. Campbell’s discharge from Woodcliff for the sole purpose of obtaining the result of a PCR test would have unnecessarily lengthened her exposure to the virus in a congregant setting were she not already infected, putting her interest and that of her husband at odds,” a three-judge panel wrote.
Both the Campbell estate and the nursing home agreed that the medical staff notified the patient about her positive test as soon as it came in — two days after her discharge — and offered information about quarantining. But the Campbell estate alleged medical negligence, wrongful death and a survival claim related to failure to consider the risk to Campbell’s husband.
While the judges tussled with prior state rulings regarding obligations to notify third parties of potential risk, they ultimately decided those didn’t matter. Nothing in the actions of Woodcliff or its physician would have risen to gross negligence — the only claim permissible under the state’s COVID immunity law — they determined.
“What is clear is that plaintiff did not plead facts that would permit a reasonable jury to conclude defendants were indifferent to Mrs. Campbell or acted egregiously in ‘thoughtless disregard of the consequences’ to her or her husband by discharging her,” the judges wrote.
An administrator at Woodcliff did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment by deadline Thursday.
Selva Campbell had been admitted to Woodcliff on March 23 and was discharged on April 14, the same day the state Legislature passed the COVID Immunity Statute and made it retroactive to March 9.
That statute, and the federal PREP Act, erase liability claims for injuries or death resulting from any of “acts or omissions in providing medical services in response to the COVID outbreak during the public health emergency.”
In reaching its decision, the New Jersey panel considered advice from The New Jersey Defense Association, which agreed the facility “owed no duty of care to non-patient third parties on the facts alleged and that trial courts should be instructed to dismiss COVID-related complaints against healthcare providers with prejudice before discovery.”
