Practice point: The Appellate Division reversed the motion court's denial of summary judgment, and dismissed the claim against defendant hospital. The decedent, plaintiff's husband and a hospital employee, became intoxicated at a holiday party organized by hospital workers. The party was not sanctioned by the hospital, and was not held on hospital property. The hospital employees attended the party on their own time. The decedent's coworkers contacted the plaintiff, herself a hospital employee, and then helped the decedent into the plaintiff's car. The plaintiff drove home and left the decedent in the car, parked in their driveway, to sleep off his condition. An hour later, the plaintiff checked on the decedent, and found him, unresponsive, on the floor of the back seat. The autopsy report lists the cause of the death as alcohol intoxication and positional asphyxia.
The Appellate Division determined that the hospital employees, in assisting the decedent and placing him in his wife's care, did not assume a duty, and nothing they did put the decedent in a worse or different position of danger. Any opinions rendered about medical attention being unnecessary were nonactionable gratuitous commentary. In addition, placing the decedent into the car was not the proximate cause of his death, but merely furnished the occasion for its happening.
Case: Gillern v. Mahoney, NY Slip Op 06979 (1st Dep't October 5, 2017)
Here is the decision.
