Award set in lesbian nurse trial

0 Comments | Milwaukee Sentinel, Mar 16, 1995 | by KATHLEEN OSTRANDER

Janesville A Rock County jury deliberated about three hours Wednesday before ruling a psychiatric patient should be paid $360,000 because a hospital nurse engaged in a lesbian relationship with her. The jury found the negligence of Mercy Hospital employees contributed to the injury of the Janesville woman, 36.

But court personnel said they did not know if the damages would actually be paid by Mercy because the jury also found the nurse 75% negligent and the hospital employees only 25% negligent.

The jury awarded no punitive damages and found the nurse was not acting within the scope of her employment at Mercy when she caused the harm to the woman.

Both the nurse and her insurance company settled for an undisclosed amount prior to trial.

During the eight-day trial of the patient's lawsuit, the woman maintained she was seduced into a lesbian relationship by a psychiatric nurse who took advantage of her because of details she read in her file.

The woman and her attorney contended the hospital was negligent and responsible for the subsequent break-up of the woman's marriage. The hospital's defense was that the woman's marriage was already breaking up and the hospital had no control over the nurse's affair with the woman, which began the day the woman was discharged from the hospital.

According to evidence presented in the case:

The woman had a history of sexual abuse and lesbian relationships. At age 19 she married a local man and had two children. But in January of 1992, she came upon her son being sexually abused by a neighbor boy, said her attorney, John L. Cates.

She became deeply depressed and was admitted to the Mercy Hospital psychiatric ward. There she met a psychiatric nurse hired as a temporary employee by the hospital.

The woman left her husband and two children and moved in with the nurse. Later, the relationship broke off.

The woman attempted suicide several times and later entered into an abusive lesbian relationship with a woman who looked exactly like the nurse, Cates said.

Attorney Robert G. Krohn argued for the hospital that the woman had a borderline personality disorder as well as deep depression when she came to the psychiatric ward.

"She had already had several lesbian relationships. What are they trying to say? She contracted lesbianism as a result of her stay in the hospital?" Krohn asked the jury.

He said the hospital perhaps could have questioned the woman when it came to the hospital's attention the nurse was spending too much time with her during therapy sessions. "Hindsight is 20-20," Krohn said. "Could you reasonably conclude because the door was shut that they would end up in bed together?"