Summary
In Palm Springs, the court denied a petition for certiorari as to the denial of the defendant hospital's motion to dismiss and held the plaintiff had no obligation to comply with the screening provisions in a premises liability action alleging the hospital was negligent in placing the plaintiff in a room with another patient, who attacked her.
Summary of this case from Paulk v. Nat'l Medical EnterprisesOpinion
No. 95-1638.
September 13, 1995. Rehearing Denied November 15, 1995.
Petition from the Circuit Court, Dade County, Thomas S. Wilson, Jr., J.
Womack Bass and Judith A. Bass, for petitioner.
Ralph P. Ezzo, for respondent.
Before HUBBART and JORGENSON and GERSTEN, JJ.
This is a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the defendant Palm Springs Hospital seeking review of a trial court order denying the defendant's motion to dismiss the action below for failure to comply with the medical malpractice screening requirements of Sections 766.104(1), 766.203(2), 766.106(2), Florida Statutes (1993). The action below seeks to hold the defendant liable for negligently placing the plaintiff Madellyn Perez, a hospital patient of the defendant, in a room with another patient who thereafter committed a homosexual attack on the plaintiff. We deny the subject petition based on a holding that the action below sounds in common law negligence, not medical malpractice, as it is, in effect, a premises liability case arising out of a criminal attack by a third party; consequently, the plaintiff was under no statutory obligation to comply with the above medical malpractice screening requirements which are only applicable, unlike this case, to medical malpractice actions. See J.B. v. Sacred Heart Hosp., 635 So.2d 945 (Fla. 1994); Silva v. Southwest Fla. Blood Bank, Inc., 601 So.2d 1184 (Fla. 1992).
Certiorari denied.