Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in New Jersey

Re: Is hospital at fault

First, let me express my condolences for your loss.

Your question raises many issues. I will discuss several I have identified.

First, what STATE did this occur in? (NJ or NV?)

If you (or the person who speaks for your mother) believe that you may have a malpractice case, you should contact an attorney in that state - You can look to this list, the local Bar Association or the area Yellow Pages.

While there are many reasons that the hospital MAY be responsible - I personally would not take this case - ANOTHER ATTORNEY MAY - so I encourage you to inquire as soon as possible if you believe that you have a case.

That said - YES the hospital DOES have responsibilities to a person who signs out Against Medical Advice (AMA). I was taught that:

1.They are responsible to offer the best treatment under the circumstances - For example - they may have had the responsibility to arrange transport home with Oxygen.

2. They must document that the person signing AMA (in this case - it appears to be your mother�s sister) is competent to do so and enderstand the risks they are taking.

That said, the problem with taking this as a med-mal case, is that regardless of what I was taught, regrading the above responsibilities, a jury would give a lot of weight to that piece of paper - This will be very hard to overcome if this were to come to trial.

Another problem, is that you would have to prove that she would have if she was given transport home with Oxygen - that MAY have been the case, but the fact that the hospital wanted to keep her suggests otherwise. Again A very heavy burden to overcome at trial.

This is only my opinion, I encourage you to inquire as soon as possible if you believe that you have a case.

Re: Is hospital at fault

The question of whether the hospital is at fault is very fact sensitive. When one leaves against medical advice, one assumes the risk of that. Here, the hospital did not have a duty to send her out with oxygen if she left the hospital. However, there may be an issue still to look at when she re-entered the hospital in distress and was not given assistance.

So there may be some potential fault on the part of the hospital.