Administrative law judge rules in favor of Civil Justice Clinic client in job dispute

January 5, 2017Duke Law News

An administrative law judge ruled in favor of a Duke Civil Justice Clinic client in December, after third-year students Ben Wasserman and Eleanor Geise successfully conducted a trial on her behalf. The client was a certified nursing assistant (CNA) who had been working at a nursing home, and who was accused of neglecting and injuring a patient by improperly lifting her out of her wheelchair and placing her on her bed, resulting in a broken leg. As a result of the charge, the CNA was fired from her job and her name was posted on a state-wide registry, thus preventing her from finding any employment in the healthcare sector where she had been employed for 25 years.

Geise and Wasserman presented opening and closing statements to the court in High Point, conducted direct and cross-examinations of witnesses, and reviewed and utilized extensive document discovery. They were able to demonstrate that their client, when she began her shift, was confronted with an emergency situation involving an hysterical patient who had been sitting for an extended time in her own fecal matter. They also showed that the medical evidence was inconclusive as to whether any action by the CNA caused the broken leg.

The judge found that the clinic’s client responded as best she could to a difficult and emergent situation and that there was not sufficient evidence to hold that her actions resulted in injury to the patient.

The judge ordered that the adverse posting of the client’s name be removed from the healthcare registry and within a week she found new employment as a CNA.