Significant Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruling for all of health care – please read

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals recently issued a decision in the case, Miceli-Krupka vs. Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin (Children’s).  The Court’s decision can be found here. In Children’s, the Court of Appeals reviewed an $8 million trial jury verdict against Children’s.  The trial jury concluded that Children’s staff failed to follow through on implementing its own security precautions to address and control a history of menacing and violent behavior of a particular visitor.  Unfortunately, this visitor ended up assaulting another visitor causing her serious injury.

WHCA/WiCAL partnered with LeadingAge Wisconsin and Wisconsin Assisted Living Association on an amicus (friend of the court) brief.  In the brief we argued that the trial jury’s verdict should be reversed because of the public policy implications to long term facilities and to residents and families if facilities had to substantially heighten security and/or restrict visitor access.  In the alternative, we asked the court to make its decision as narrow as possible if it decided to affirm the trial jury’s verdict.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial jury’s verdict.  However, in doing so, the Court also made clear that its decision should be narrowly interpreted to apply only to the facts and circumstances of the instant case.  In an important footnote, the Court referenced our amicus brief and how helpful it was:

“ There were two amici briefs submitted by other healthcare-related organizations that also argue that allowing recovery in this case would hurt healthcare providers by increasing their liability. CHW (Children’s) also argues that liability here could increase the need for healthcare spending on security, which could then impact patient care. We appreciate these concerns, but consider our decision to be narrowly tailored to the specific facts presented. As this court has noted previously, “[n]o future Wisconsin court is required or encouraged to venture into cases which shock the conscience of society by anything we have written here. Public policy is decided on a case-by-case basis and we only decide the issue before us.” Tesar v. Anderson, 2010 WI App 116, ¶35, 329 Wis. 2d 240, 789 N.W.2d 351. 23”

We wish to thank the WHCA/WiCAL Board of Directors for approving our participation in the amicus brief.  The team at Reinhart law, led by Bob Lightfoot, represented the three Associations on the amicus brief and clearly did outstanding work.

Questions about the decision?  Please contact Rick, rick@whcawical.org.