Case Brief: Montague V. AMN Healthcare, Inc.

Hillary Graham
Legal Aspects 340
Prof. Gerrie Schipske
Mon-Wed. 12:30 pm
Case Brief: Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc.

The case of Sara Montague et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. AMN Healthcare, INC., Defendant and Respondent, was taken up and decided in the appellate court. The case was first granted a standard review of a summary judgment, which failed, the plaintiff then appealed this motion. After the appeal it then went to court to be heard in a normal trial. Just to be a bit more precise, it was heard and decided as case No. D063385. in the Court of Appeals of California, Fourth District, Division One, on the 21st of February in 2014. In this court case, representing Sara Montague, the plaintiff and appellant, was the law office of

Samuel Dagan and Lisa Dearden and Representing the side of the AMN Healthcare, Inc., who is the defendant and Respondents was Cole Pedroza, Curtis A. Cole, Cassidy C. Davenport, and in addition was Parrett & Odell, Steven R. Odell and Edward L. Schumann. The AMN Healthcare, Inc., is apart of the business called Nursefinders whose main job is a staffing company specifically for nurses and medical personnel for a variety of medical settings (Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc., 2014).
This case came to court because of a business by the name of AMN Healthcare, Inc., also referred to as Nursefinders which, is a company whose main purpose is to recruit and assist in placing certified licensed nurses and other medical personnel to a large variety of different medical facilities where they can be employed.

There is a woman by the name of Theresa Drummond who is a licensed medical assistant; she went through the company of Nursefinders to help assist her in placing her into a job and they did exactly that. They found her a medical assisting job at a Kaiser Medical Facility and at the Kaiser Facility where she got employed to is where she met the plaintiff in this case whose name is Sara Montague, she is also employed as a medical assistant. During a few different occurrences at the Kaiser Medical Facility both Theresa Drummond and the plaintiff Sara Montague had their differences and got into arguments while on the job. One of the arguments was about how the rooms were being stocked improperly and the argument following that was regarding some lab slips that had been lost, during this particular incident Theresa Drummond raised her voice at the plaintiff Sara Montague (Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc.,

2014).
After that particular incident where Theresa Drummond raised her voice at the plaintiff Sara Montague she had left her water bottle at work over night and sometime later when the plaintiff drank from her water again her tongue and throat started burn and then she proceeded to vomit.

After this occurred to the plaintiff by drinking her water, eventually Theresa Drummond came clean and admitted to putting carbolic acid in to Montague’s water bottle that was left at work. The carbolic acid was in fact found in the Kaiser Medical Facilities examination room where both the medical assistants work at (Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc.,

2014).
The legal issues that the plaintiff Sara Montague is bringing to court so that they can be decided on is that her and her husband would like to sue Drummond and the business that helped place Drummond at the Kaiser Medical Facility, which was Nursefinders for the alleged causes of action for negligence per se, battery, negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress under a theory of respondeat superior. In addition, Sara Montague is trying to claim that regarding Drummond Nursefinders negligently hired, retained, supervised and trained her. On top of the other charges Montague's husband is claiming that there is a loss of consortium (Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc., 2014).
The influential facts of this case are that the summary judgment about the causes of action failed because of a few different reasons based on the superior liability. This case also failed in the California appellate court the same way as it did in the summary judgment when it was heard there. The facts of this case and the reason why it failed was because Theresa Drummond was a special employee of the Kaiser Medical Facility and because she acted outside the scope of her employment. There were not enough solid facts and evidence to be trialed on, Nursefinders was found in favor because respondeat superior liability proves that the defendant was at Kaiser as a special employee and Nursefinders had nothing to do with the poisoning that happened to the plaintiff therefore no claims can be found since the defendant and Nursefinders are two completely different entities. Another key fact was that the plaintiffs husband claim on loss of consortium ended up failing because there was a lack of a viable cause of action found in the evidence. Therefore, this case was unanimous in the fact that the claims charged all were dismissed (Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc., 2014).

Reference Page
Montague v. AMN Healthcare, Inc., 223 Cal. App. 4th 1515, 168 Cal. Rptr. 3d 123 (Ct. App. 2014).
Deficiency