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WILKES-BARRE – Most of the $400,000 awarded to a nurse from her former employer is supposed to deter the company from repeating the act that led to the lawsuit, the nurse’s attorney said.
A jury on Thursday awarded the nurse, identified only as Jane Doe, the money from Wyoming Valley Health Care System after an official publicly revealed confidential information from Doe’s work file.
Of that verdict, $350,000 was awarded to Doe in punitive damages.
“Punitive damages are supposed to be in an amount sufficient to deter the defendant from doing it again,” Doe’s attorney, Kimberly Borland, said Friday.
The jury’s verdict was “very appropriate,” Borland said, but it’s hard to gauge whether the punitive damages will have the proper impact.
“Only time will tell whether they change,” he said.
Doe’s invasion of privacy suit stemmed from labor hearings that were being conducted regarding a request by nurses to conduct a union election.
During the public hearings, hospital official Mary Beth Komnath testified that Doe, who was part of the union organizing committee, failed to take a patient’s vital signs as she was ordered to in March 1996.
The suit made it to trial this week before Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Judge Hugh Mundy.
There, Borland argued Komnath had no legitimate reason to publicly disclose the confidential information. Borland told the jury that type of information can only be released with an employee’s consent or subpoena.
Doe was never asked for consent, Borland said. And there were no subpoenas issued, he said.
Plus, Borland noted, the information Komnath revealed was misleading.
The events were not in dispute, Borland said. Whether Komnath’s actions were wrong and outrageous was the issue, he said.
The health care system’s attorney, Frederick Walton, argued the information at the labor hearing was disclosed using Doe’s real name because that is the common, accepted procedure of such hearings. Walton indicated he might pursue an appeal.
Borland said Doe is now a nurse at another local hospital.
Kevin McDonald, a spokesman for the health care system, did not return a call seeking comment Friday.