Green v. Christiana Care Health Services

The Freibott Law Firm was recently successful in arguing a case in front of the Industrial Accident Board wherein our client was injured in a work related accident while working as a registered nurse at the Christiana Hospital.  Our client was injured on August 21, 2014 while she was working for the hospital.  Our client heard a bed exit alarm sound in a nearby hospital room and when she went in to investigate, she found a restrained patient trying to get out of bed.  The patient, who had sustained a serious head injury, was confused and trying to remove his restraints.  Our client grabbed the restraint closest to her which was attached to the patient’s left arm.  The patient then began to pull our client very hard and pulled on his restraints causing our client to be jerked towards the patient.  The patient then grabbed our client near the shoulders of her uniform and shook her.  Our client had to use her left arm to force the patient off of her and attempted to put the patient back on the bed again.  Our client began having serious pain symptoms in her neck and down her arm.  Our client had sustained an injury to her shoulder area in early July of 2014 when she was attempting to move a lawnmower.  Christiana Hospital argued that all of her symptoms and all of her complaints related to the prior non-work related injury in July of 2014.  The Industrial Accident Board found that our client was credible and her treating doctor, Dr. Ginsburg, was clearly more credible than that of the defense medical examiner, Dr. Gelman.  Our client testified that she did treat for a limited period of time after the lawn mower incident but ended her treatment on July 31, 2014.  After that, she worked three weeks at the Christiana Hospital working full duty with no restrictions and up to 12 hours per day.  The Freibott Law Firmsubpoenaed several witnesses to appear on behalf of our client.  Two nurses credibly testified that our client was a very hard worker and did complaint of immediate pain from her neck and arm following the incident with the combative patient.  The Industrial Accident Board ruled that our client sustained a serious injury to her neck which will need immediate corrective surgery.  Accordingly, the Industrial Accident Board found that our client was involved in a compensable work accident; awarded that all medical expenses incurred by our client to date to be reimbursed by the Christiana Hospital; and ordered Christiana Hospital to pay an attorney’s fee and reimburse our firm for its expenditure of expert witness fees.  (Green v. Christiana Care Health Services,Hearing No.: 1417485)