Opinion ID: 1486808
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Hospital's Financial Relationship with the University.

Text: Likewise, we find no error in the trial court's limitation of Ms. Knight's cross-examination of a witness concerning the hospital's financial relationship with the university. Mr. Dan Oldani, the hospital's chief operating officer, had testified on direct examination about the hospital's recent operating loss of $4 million and explained that the elimination of the Transfusion Services Unit was partially a response to financial pressures. On cross-examination, Ms. Knight asked about the hospital's net revenue and assetswhich ranged in the hundreds of millions of dollarsin an effort to show that the $4 million loss was relatively insignificant. Ms. Knight then elicited Mr. Oldani's acknowledgement that the hospital was one component of Georgetown University Medical Center, which was itself part of the entire university structure. When Ms. Knight proceeded to ask about other Georgetown institutions, counsel for the defendants objected. At a bench conference, the trial court expressed concern that the questioning on the university's net resources and assets beyond the hospital was relevant mainly to calculating punitive damages, which Ms. Knight had been precluded from seeking. Counsel for Ms. Knight explained that he was only going to try and make clear that the hospital is not a separately incorporated entity and doesn't have to be treated separately for accounting purposes. That was it. The trial court stated, All right, we're done with money, and sustained the objection. We see no abuse of discretion in this ruling. Ms. Knight adequately made her point that the hospital's income losses could be viewed in the perspective not only of the hospital's own assets and revenues but of the hospital as part of a medical center and a university as a whole, and thus cannot be said to have been deprived of a sufficiently full and fair opportunity to probe Georgetown's explanation that financial pressures required the elimination of her unit. Moreover, as with the safety of the Red Cross's blood-collection procedures, the financial situation of the hospital explained only why the unit was eliminated in the first place, not why Ms. Knight did not obtain alternative employment. Even Ms. Knight's complaint recognized that a purpose of the reorganization was to reduce costs. Her chief argument then, as now, was that once the reorganization was underway the hospital proceeded to treat the two white employees differently from the two African American employees. The accounting practices of the university would have little to say about Ms. Knight's theory of disparate treatment, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in curbing Ms. Knight's further cross-examination on this point.