Newark Team Secures Appellate Victory for Healthcare Facility in COVID-19 Wrongful Death Case

Newark, N.J. (July 1, 2024) - Newark Partners S. Christopher Martino, Malinda Miller, Alex Raybould, and Salvatore D’Elia III recently obtained a published decision from a New Jersey appeals court holding that their healthcare facility client is immune from a lawsuit stemming from the death of a former patient’s husband from COVID-19, which he allegedly contracted from the patient following her discharge from the facility.

A panel of the Appellate Division reversed a Bergen County trial court’s decision denying motions to dismiss filed by Lewis Brisbois’ client, Woodcliff Lake Health & Rehabilitation Center, and a co-defendant doctor, and directed that the complaint be dismissed with prejudice.

The appeals court determined that both Woodcliff and the doctor are immune from the lawsuit under the New Jersey COVID-19 Immunity Statute, which was enacted on April 20, 2020 and applied retroactively to March 9, 2020. The statute provided that no healthcare facility or doctor shall be liable for “civil damages for injury or death alleged to have been sustained as a result of an act or omission by the health care professional in the course of providing medical services in support of the State's response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease during the public health emergency and state of emergency declared by the Governor in Executive Order 103 of 2020.”

The circumstances giving rise to the case dated back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Selva Campbell, a stroke patient, was admitted to Woodcliff on March 23, 2020, just two days after New Jersey’s governor issued the state’s first stay-at-home order and less than two weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Woodcliff discharged Mrs. Campbell to her husband’s care on April 14, one day after she had received a COVID-19 test, and on April 16, the facility notified Mrs. Campbell that it had received a positive test result from its offsite lab. While Mrs. Campbell survived her COVID-19 infection, her husband contracted the virus – allegedly from his wife – and later succumbed. Mr. Campbell’s estate proceeded to sue Woodcliff and Mrs. Campbell’s treating doctor at the facility, asserting medical negligence, wrongful death, and survival claims.

Woodcliff and the co-defendant doctor filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, asserting that they owed no duty of care to Mr. Campbell – as a third-party non-patient – and arguing that they were immune from suit under the Immunity Statute and Public Readiness Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. The trial court denied the motions, holding that the estate was entitled to discovery on whether the defendants’ conduct constituted gross negligence, which would not be subject to the Immunity Statute’s protections.

In reversing the trial court, the Appellate Division noted that there is no well-established common-law rule in New Jersey stating that a physician has a duty to warn a third party of possible exposure to contagious or infectious diseases, while also emphasizing the lack of clarity at the pandemic’s outset around the manner in which COVID-19 is transmitted.

“COVID is spread by airborne transmission, although that was not understood at the time of the events giving rise to this case,” the opinion said. “That fact highlights that these events took place in the earliest days of the pandemic, when little was known about the virus — other than it was very contagious and had a high mortality rate particularly among the ill and the elderly — and in the face of rapidly changing edicts and advice from government agencies attempting to address the public health crisis and slow the spread of the disease.”

Even if the plaintiff could establish that Woodcliff and the co-defendant doctor owed a duty of care to Mr. Campbell, it cannot plausibly allege on these facts that the defendants’ alleged breach of any such duty rose to the level of gross negligence, the appeals court ruled.

“Simply stated, the Legislature's decision in the COVID Immunity Statute to temporarily limit the scope of whatever duty we might recognize defendants owed the Campbells to one of simply avoiding gross negligence during the height of the COVID pandemic leaves the Estate unable to state a claim on the facts alleged,” the opinion stated. “It is not possible for a reasonable jury to find defendants were not simply negligent, but grossly negligent or reckless in discharging Mrs. Campbell from Woodcliff to the care of her husband in April 2020, before knowing the result of her pending PCR test.”

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