Judge: In lawsuit from mother of slain KATV anchor, hospital not to blame

Anne Pressly is shown in this file photo.
Anne Pressly is shown in this file photo.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson ruled Friday that the hospital where murdered TV anchor Anne Pressly died cannot be blamed for the wrongdoing of two former hospital workers who illegally snooped into her medical records shortly after she was hospitalized.

Johnson announced to attorneys that he was throwing out the lawsuit by Pressly's mother against CHI St. Vincent Infirmary, but allowing Patti Cannady's suit to proceed against the former hospital workers, Candida Griffin and Sarah Elizabeth Miller, as well as a doctor who also looked at the records, Dr. Jay Holland.

Cannady argues in her lawsuit that the workers, who were fired and prosecuted for violating federal medical-privacy laws, had gone beyond what they were hired to do when they looked at the records to satisfy their curiosity.

Holland was not a St. Vincent employee, but had privileges at the hospital and was a medical director at a specialty hospital, now closed, that was a St. Vincent tenant. Holland's attorney, Andy Taylor of Little Rock, did not return an email seeking comment.

Holland had joined in the hospital's legal argument that the claim Cannady is making in her lawsuit -- that the conduct of the three was so outrageous that it inflicted emotional damage -- does not meet the legal threshold to sue.

The courts have said outrage has to be in reaction to conduct so extreme that it is beyond the bounds of human decency and intolerable to civilized society.

Hospital attorneys had argued that courts have ruled that victims of child molesters could not meet that burden of proof.

But the judge told the lawyers there was enough evidence for the outrage claim regarding the former hospital workers and doctor to go to a jury.

His ruling, announced via letter Friday to the parties, is informal. The hospital lawyers will draft a written decision for the judge to sign once it has been approved for form by the other attorneys.

Cannady's attorney, Gerry Schulze, said her lawyers disagreed with the judge's ruling absolving the hospital of "vicarious liability" for its employees' misdeeds.

"We are considering our strategy," Schulze said in an email. "We are prepared to go to trial with the individual defendants if necessary."

Hospital attorneys had challenged the legality of blaming St. Vincent for what its workers had done. The hospital had extensive training for its employees on the importance of respecting client privacy and had warned them against accessing records they had no legitimate need to see, lawyers contended.

In testimony taken during the course of the litigation, Cannady said she was not particularly angry with the women, but felt that Holland should be held to a higher standard.

"I don't want anything bad to happen to anybody, not to the poor girls ... but he's smart and he had a high education and that should never happen," Cannady told lawyers in October 2014. "And my God, not to Anne. Me, would be a different thing. You know, but it shouldn't happen to anybody before, during or after Anne.

"I think he should have lost his job. [St. Vincent] terminated the girls that probably needed the jobs and kept the doctor. What punishment is there for that?"

Griffin, Miller and Holland all pleaded guilty to misdemeanor federal medical-privacy violations and were fined and placed on probation for a year.

Griffin and Miller used computer terminals at work to look at the records while Holland accessed them from his home computer.

He later said he briefly glanced at the records to see whether his specialized training in wound recovery could assist Pressly. The hospital canceled his privileges for two weeks and required him to take an online medical-privacy course. He was also sanctioned by the state Medical Board and fined $500.

Cannady's lawsuit was filed in October 2009, shortly before the trial of the man convicted of beating Pressly to death.

The judge dismissed the suit completely in January 2011 after ruling that Pressly's mother could not sue for invasion of privacy on her daughter's behalf after her death.

That ruling was upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court, but the justices revived the portion of the suit involving the outrage claim, saying the judge needed more evidence before dismissing that complaint.

Pressly, Cannady's only child, was raped and fatally beaten in her bed in her Little Rock home in October 2008 by burglar Curtis Vance of Marianna. DNA from a hair fragment found on her bed connected Vance to the attack, and he eventually confessed to attacking the 26-year-old KATV, Channel 7, anchor.

He was convicted of capital murder, rape, residential burglary and theft in November 2009 and sentenced to life in prison after jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on execution.

Pressly would have turned 34 on Sunday. Vance, now 35, has used up all of his appeals.

Metro on 08/27/2016

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