Court: Hospital not responsible for any patient molestation doctor did after he left its employ

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Children's Hospital is not legally responsible for "unnecessary genital examinations" done by a former doctor at the hospital after he moved to North Carolina.

The families of several children treated by Dr. Melvin Levine after he quit Children's in 1985 and moved to North Carolina sued the hospital, saying it should have known he was a child molester - because of complaints filed in Massachusetts - and done something to stop him from continuing his fingering ways in North Carolina. Levine died in 2011.

In its ruling, the state's highest court said it would be unfair to require an employer to be responsible in perpetuity for ex-employees:

While there is little doubt that Children's Hospital had a duty to supervise and monitor Levine's conduct while he was employed as a physician there, and owed a duty of reasonable care to his minor patients to prevent foreseeable harm to them, that is not this case. We have never recognized or imposed a duty on an employer to prevent the future behavior of a former employee, with respect to unknown customers and clients of unknown future employers. While the responsibilities of medical providers to vulnerable patients might extend beyond those of other service-providing employers, the geographic and temporal breadth of the duty the plaintiffs seek to impose reaches too far, and would potentially expose the employer to liability to an essentially limitless class of unknown parties for acts committed long after the employer had any ability to supervise, monitor, or discipline the former employee's conduct. We decline to create such uncertainties for medical providers in the Commonwealth by creating such a duty, and are not aware of any other jurisdiction that has done so.