Lawyers Debate Hospital Liability, by Daniel P. Jones, Hartford Courant, December 4, 2007

Lawyers Debate Hospital Liability

By Daniel P. Jones
Hartford Courant
December 4, 2007

http://www.courant.com/news/local/hc-reardon1204.artdec04,0,4669239.story

The top lawyer at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford says the hospital had no specific information about Dr. George Reardon's alleged sexual abuse of children before complaints surfaced in medical hearings in the early 1990s.

But experienced civil litigation lawyers, some of whom are suing the hospital or evaluating potential complaints, say that might not matter.

They say that plaintiffs might be able to make a case that the hospital is liable because St. Francis employed Reardon and gave him privileges in its facilities. Or the plaintiffs could prevail, the lawyers say, by arguing that the hospital should have known what Reardon was doing — especially since he was dealing with children.

West Hartford police Wednesday announced that in May a homeowner on Griswold Drive renovating the basement found a large quantity - 50,000 35-mm slides and more than 100 8-mm video reels - of child pornography hidden in a secret storage area in the home, which was previously owned by Dr. George Reardon, a former chief of endocrinology at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford with a troubled history.

While they acknowledge it will be difficult to make a case against the hospital, the lawyers say the success of any litigation may hinge on the number of victims who come forward and the consistency of their stories.

"It's because of the sheer numbers of people over a length of time that would make me feel the hospital was responsible because it should have been picked up along the way," said Jason E. Tremont, a Bridgeport lawyer whose firm has represented more than 100 people, none of them Reardon's alleged victims, who were childhood sexual assault victims. Some of those cases involved abuse by Catholic priests.

Reardon, an endocrinologist at St. Francis for 30 years who died in 1998, resigned in 1993 after being hit with accusations that he sexually molested and inappropriately photographed children over decades, starting in the 1950s.

Joel Faxon, a lawyer with the Stratton Faxon firm in New Haven who represents a man who Monday lodged the first lawsuit against St. Francis, says the hospital is liable because Reardon worked there and was a prominent member of the staff.

"They gave him an office in the hospital, the title of chief of endocrinology staff, the white coat, the secretary, the study. For decades, they employed him, made him their ambassador and gave him all of the tools he needed to lure scores of children, and when he was charged with molestation — they defended him," Faxon said. "Without the St. Francis veil of credibility, Reardon could not have accomplished such mass exploitation."

Since West Hartford police last week announced that the current owner of Reardon's former Griswold Drive home discovered a huge secret cache of child pornography during renovations, detectives have fielded calls from more than 80 people who say Reardon sexually abused them or inappropriately photographed them.

Police are trying to identify victims pictured in a huge child pornography cache of slides and videos found at a home in West Hartford.

Faxon's firm filed a civil complaint against St. Francis in Superior Court in Hartford.

A man, now in his early 40s, alleges that Reardon took him out of the community and abused him in the doctor's hospital office in the 1970s. He was between 12 and 14 at the time and now lives in the Hartford area.

More lawsuits are expected from alleged victims who either lived in the community or were patients in the hospital.

Barry Feldman, the hospital's general counsel and senior vice president, said Monday in response to the lawsuit, "I don't believe that any of the allegations would support wrongdoing by St. Francis itself."

He discounted the idea that the number of alleged victims would implicate the hospital. "Let's say the number is 80 or that the number is 100," he said. "There will be a 30-year period in which Reardon was practicing" and "that would be assuming that all these patients were abused by Dr. Reardon at the hospital," Feldman said.

"One hundred over 30 years is not a constant parade" to Reardon's hospital office, he said.

Some of the alleged abuse incidents took place outside the hospital, Feldman said, and "St. Francis certainly can't be charged with knowing what his activities were outside the hospital."

When the accusations against Reardon surfaced in the early 1990s, Feldman said, there was nothing "further that would have given any indication of the apparent scope of Dr. Reardon's inappropriate activities."

The hospital has photographs of patients taken by Reardon that, according to Feldman, were used for legitimate purposes in the hospital.

"There were indeed people who knew he was taking photos in connection with the work he was doing," and the pictures often were shared in teaching seminars, Feldman said.

He said hospital officials offered to help West Hartford police in their inquiry. "They want to meet with us probably the first part of next week," Feldman said. "We don't know how we might be helpful or how they could be helpful to us."

Feldman said the hospital has set up a confidential toll-free telephone number for Reardon's alleged victims and their families, and will help develop a program to provide counseling at the hospital's expense.

He also said that as officials get further into an analysis of claims against the hospital, "we would try to set up an alternative dispute resolution process that could involve arbitration or mediation, with the intention of alleviating any claims with less litigation to all parties."

Dr. George E. Reardon, who died in 1998, listens to testimony in 1993 at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford that he had sexually abused a brother and sister.
Photo by Michael McAndrews

Veteran civil litigators interviewed by The Courant say one legal tack would be to contend the hospital employed Reardon — and gave him everything from his high appointment to his examining room — and therefore the hospital shares responsibility for the alleged abuse.

In most cases, however, Connecticut courts have not held employers responsible for their employees' behavior if the behavior amounted to criminal acts beyond the scope of normal duties set out by the employer, Tremont said.

Had a child sex abuse complaint been lodged against Reardon — before his troubles surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s — then the hospital would have had an obligation to fully investigate the claim and find out what Reardon was doing, the lawyers say.

Steven Seligman, a lawyer with Katz & Seligman in Hartford, said plaintiffs would make two claims: "One, that Dr. Reardon was acting as an agent of the hospital, therefore the hospital should be held vicariously liable. Secondly, the plaintiffs will claim that St. Francis was independently negligent when it failed to monitor Dr. Reardon and when it failed to investigate complaints of improper conduct. In short, the plaintiff will argue that the hospital knew or should have known of Dr. Reardon's outrageous behavior."

Susan K. Smith, a lawyer with Smith & Moore in Avon who represented a half-dozen people who won settlements after suing Reardon in the 1990s, said the hospital had a special obligation to keep the children who were in Reardon's care safe. The hospital became a stand-in for the children's parents or guardians, she said, and hospital officials had to take steps to protect the children.

"They [hospital officials] can't sit in their offices and wait for the story to come to them," Smith said. "There are a number of factors in this case that gave rise to the hospital's special duty to investigate the red flags: the numbers of children that were in there on weekends, the children would be seen with him in the cafeteria or the luncheonette, the children he brought from hospital wards to his office at night."

Reardon used the guise of conducting studies of childhood growth and development to recruit children for his research, according to lawyers and alleged victims. Reardon then molested the children and often photographed or filmed them in provocative and pornographic poses, according to the lawyers and victims.

The police have said the cache of child pornography that was hidden behind basement walls in Reardon's former home was staggering — 50,000 photographic slides and more than 100 movie reels.

John J. Houlihan Jr., a lawyer at RisCassi & Davis in Hartford, said the announcement of that discovery "ripped the wounds off all these people." His firm is evaluating potential claims by alleged victims, he said.

"The number of complaints and the consistency of those complaints will make it very difficult to dispute that there was some negligence in either supervising the doctor or protecting his patients from him," he said. "The more complaints there are, the more seriously the hospital is going to have to handle these."

Contact Daniel P. Jones at dpjones@courant.com.