Professional Negligence Law Reporter

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that a nurse may be liable to a behavioral health patient’s mother, who suffered severe injuries after the patient attacked her during a visit at a state-run mental health facility.

Brenden Mears suffered from severe bipolar disorder and was committed to Greystone Park, a state-run psychiatric hospital in New Jersey. While there, his condition worsened, and he severely beat another patient. Several days later, Mears’s mother asked his treating psychiatrist, Joseph Young, whether it was safe to visit. Young allegedly assured her that it was safe to visit her son. At her visit, Mears’s mother was accompanied by nurse Shira Oglesby to the visiting room. Despite an alleged policy requiring staff supervision of all patient meetings, Oglesby left the room. Mears beat his mother severely, causing her brain trauma, broken ribs, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Suit against Greystone, Young, and Oglesby alleged §1983 claims, which the trial court dismissed on the basis of sovereign immunity. The plaintiffs appealed the trial court’s dismissal of their claims against Young and Oglesby.

Reversing in part and affirming in part, the Third Circuit noted that to state a claim for state-created danger, a plaintiff must prove that he or she suffered a foreseeable harm; the state acted with a degree of culpability that shocks the conscience; he or she was a foreseeable victim; and the state affirmatively used its authority to create a danger or to make the plaintiff more vulnerable to danger.

The court found that the affirmative act referenced in the last prong must amount to a restraint on personal liberty, similar to incarceration or institutionalization. Here, the court said, Young’s alleged assurances that it was safe to visit Mears did not amount to an affirmative act. Young did not deprive the mother of her power to choose whether to visit, the court said, adding that under relevant case law, assurances and failures to warn do not constitute affirmative acts. Thus, the court held that Young’s encouragement to visit was not an affirmative act, and the trial court’s dismissal of the plaintiffs’ claims against Young had been proper.

Turning to the claims against Oglesby, the court found that the trial court had erred in concluding that the nurse had not acted affirmatively to create a danger to Mears’s mother. The court reasoned that by leaving the room, Oglesby—who had notice of the serious harm posed by Mears—may have facilitated his attack on his mother, who suffered foreseeable and direct harm from the attack and was an identifiable victim. Citing case law, the court found that it is inherently risky to leave a visitor with a violent psychiatric patient, even when the visitor is the patient’s mother.

The court also found that Oglesby, a state actor, had made the mother more vulnerable to harm by leaving the visiting room. Giving and then taking away support is active conduct, the court said, and Oglesby’s conduct deprived Mears’s mother of the chance to decide whether to have an unsupervised visit or to take extra precautions.

Consequently, the court remanded for a determination of the merits of the rest of the plaintiffs’ state-created danger claim.

Citation: Mears v. Connolly, 24 F.4th 880 (3d Cir. 2022).

Plaintiff counsel: Patrick J. Dwyer, Thomas E. Hastings, and William E. McGrath Jr., all of Princeton, N.J.