Opinion ID: 1897190
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the issues presented on appeal

Text: The complexity of these appeals is manifested in the respective arguments of the parties and in the findings of the trial court. The appellees contend that control of the hospital employees who allegedly committed these negligent acts cannot be imputed to HCA and HMC via the theory of respondeat superior and cite the trial court's order, which states in relevant part: Plaintiffs have failed to create a factual issue that HCA or Management [HMC] employees were involved in the commission of the alleged torts, or are responsible on a respondeat superior basis. In the Anderson case, the evidence is undisputed that the nursing personnel who allegedly abandoned plaintiff were employees of the Monroe County Hospital Board. In Larrimore, the evidence is undisputed that the pharmacist is an employee of the Monroe County Hospital Board. In Black, the personnel criticized in the affidavit of plaintiff's expert are all, again, without dispute, employees of the L.V. Stabler Memorial Hospital. In Long, the nurses criticized by plaintiff's expert are employees of the Flowers Hospital, Inc. The appellants' argument that employees of HMC and HCA had the right to control the hospital employees in each of these cases did not impress the trial court. It was not convinced that the appellants had sustained their burden of proof in establishing that the two corporations committed negligent acts or omissions in their roles as supervisors or overseers of the hospital employees. Both the arguments of counsel and the trial court's findings tend to confuse the transfer-of-venue issue in two aspects: 1) They treat the question of the respective liabilities of HCA and HMC as a common factor for venue determination; and 2) they treat the determination of liability of all three hospitals as a common factor, even though Stabler Hospital is wholly owned by HCA and its own employee is the hospital administrator, while the remaining two hospitals are operated by HCA's wholly owned subsidiary corporation, HMC. The appellants' burden of proof, however, was more aptly refined at oral argument by counsel for one of the non-hospital appellees: Before the transfer of venue can be undone, plaintiff must, one, establish a scintilla of evidence of negligent acts or omissions of HCA employees acting on behalf of HCA, whereby plaintiff suffered injury, or establish a scintilla of evidence of a relationship between HCA as a corporation and other persons or affiliated corporations consistent with... established principles of vicarious liability as to persons, or alter ego liability as to affiliated corporations, and, two, establish a scintilla of evidence of negligent acts or omissions by these persons or affiliated corporations in furtherance of that relationship whereby the plaintiffs suffered an injury. And unless you have that, the transfer which ensues by the affirmance of the summary judgments is valid.... And I point out that this result obtains even if this Court concludes that summary judgment in favor of HCA Management is inappropriate and is due to be reversed, because HCA Management does no business in Mobile County. So if [this Court] affirms as to HCA and reverses as to HCA Management, you still have no venue in Mobile County. For the purpose of testing the propriety of the trial court's granting of defendants' motions for change of venue, we have chosen to treat the only issue that is common to all four cases: whether HCA is entitled to summary judgment. Our resolution of this single issue requires a two-step inquiry: 1) Does the evidence show that HCA acceded to the rights (and thus assumed the legal duties) of the owners in operating the hospitals? and 2) Does the evidence present a triable issue of fact as to HCA's liability, under the theory of respondeat superior, for the negligence of the hospital employees? To be sure, once the first inquiry is answered, the second inquiry is self-answering. That is to say, if we answer the first question (whether there is a triable issue of fact as to HCA's status as the employer of the alleged tort-feasor) in the negative, the second question (whether there is a triable issue of fact as to HCA's liability) is mooted. On the other hand, if we determine that the evidence makes out a triable issue of fact as to HCA's status as the employer, no further discussion is required to demonstrate that each of the plaintiffs has clearly met the requisite burden to withstand the defendants' motions for summary judgment on the liability issue. As the above-quoted portion of the trial court's order amply demonstrates, the genuine issue of material fact being tested in each of these cases is not the tort-feasor status of the hospital employee or the physician, but the employer status of HCA. Stated otherwise, the single dispositive issue, then, is whether the evidence presents a triable issue of fact as to HCA's status as the principal (i.e., the hospital employer) of the hospital employee or agent (i.e., the alleged tort-feasor), as these terms are commonly understood in the application of the doctrine of vicarious liability. [1] We begin our analysis by an overview of the facts in support of, and in opposition to, the defendants' motions for summary judgment as they relate to the employer status of HCA. Because we find there is a material distinction between the application of the separate corporate entity doctrine with regard to the two hospitals operated by HMC and the way these principles are to be applied to Stabler Hospital, in which HMC is not involved, we deem it appropriate to isolate the facts common to the HMC-managed hospitals from the facts applicable to HCA's operation of Stabler Hospital. [2]