Tort law principles and applications

Tort Law

In 1996, the United States Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTLA) which is also know as the Emergency Act. This act was the result of highly publicized incidents where hospital emergency rooms, failed to provide a screening that would have been provided to a patient with insurance, or discharged or transferred a patient without taking the proper steps to help the patients, simply because the patients did not have insurance. This law was not intended to displace state malpractice laws, but was intended to insure that patients that came to emergency rooms were given the proper medical treatment in the proper amount of time so that the patient's condition did not worsen or the patient did not die due to lack of care just because the patient lacked medical insurance.

Bobby and Rachel, two minors were playing basketball on the school playground. It is unclear whether this was after school or whether it was at a time when the school was closed, but there were no teachers or supervisors on the school grounds, which would be grounds for some type of contributory negligence lawsuit in the following set of circumstances. There was a brand new backboard and rim that was built and installed by ACE Sports. When Bobby tried to slam dunk the ball, with a boost from Rachel, he cut both his wrists on the rim which had several small piece of metal sticking out from it. Due to the shoddy installation done by ACE Sports, they should be also held accountable through comparative negligence.

The cuts on Bobby's wrists were so severe that Rachel decided that she could not wait to call for help, (I will assume that this was due to the building being closed and therefore she had no access to a telephone) so she took Bobby to the hospital on her bike. When they arrived at City General Hospital, Bobby was immediately seen by a nurse who wrapped two large towels onto Bobby's wrists and told Bobby to put pressure on the cuts while she tried to contact Bobby's parents. Bobby was told to wait in the waiting room while his mother was contacted for insurance information for payment and consent to treat. Bobby's mother was reached 75 minutes later. After determining that there was no insurance, Bobby was transferred to a local county facility for treatment in direct violation of EMTALA.

Once the county ER doctor examined Bobby's injuries, he was referred to Dr. Andrews for immediate surgery. Dr. Andrews determined that due to the delays in treatment and the extent of Bobby's injuries, Bobby's right hand/wrist would need to be amputated. The surgeon made all the arrangements and the surgery was completed 3 hours later. Unfortunately when Bobby woke up, he was told that his left wrist/hand was amputated by mistake and he would require additional surgery to amputate the right wrist/hand.

There are many in this case that should be taken to court in different capacities as liable parties. The school should be considered liable from the standpoint of not having the school grounds locked down during periods of time when the school is closed or they should have someone patrolling the grounds. The school is also responsible for checking the workmanship of the playground equipment and seeing if it is safe for children to play on or with. The fact that the rim of the basketball goal is several feet high doesn't negate the fact that children will find a way to get up there and the equipment should have been checked by the school to see if it was safe. The company that installed the playground equipment should also be liable because they obviously did not check the equipment to see if it was safe. When Bobby arrived at the hospital, he should have been immediately taken care of, regardless of whether or not he had insurance or not. The nurse did not know whether he had insurance and I realize that she could not do any type of invasive care without consent of the parent, but she should have at least put him in a bed and monitored him instead of expecting an young boy who was probably in shock from blood loss, let alone the actual accident be responsible for taking care of himself. I am quite sure that there were more than one nurse on duty and one could have monitored Bobby while the other nurse or other staff located his mother. The fact that they waited to see if she had insurance before they treated him was reprehensible. Once he was sent to surgery, the surgeon was responsible to make sure that the correct hand was removed and there was no excuse for this error. At the very least the correct hand should have been marked in some way.