Hospital workers sue national health care company over Covid infections

In what the plaintiffs say is the first legal action of its type against a national hospital system, a health care workers' union filed a complaint Thursday accusing a Riverside County hospital of recklessly allowing the spread of COVID-19 by forcing employees to work without adequate personal protective equipment and despite showing symptoms.

Filed in the Riverside County Superior Court by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, the lawsuit accuses HCA Healthcare -- the nation's largest for-profit health care chain -- and its hospital in Riverside, of ignoring complaints of inadequate personal protective equipment and creating an unnecessarily dangerous work environment during the pandemic.

The Riverside Community Hospital, which is named in the complaint, denied the allegations in a statement Thursday, saying it will "defend it vigorously."

Representing three hospital workers who said they contracted COVID-19, and the daughter of an employee who died from the virus, union counsel Bruce A. Harland said the hospital owes a duty of care not only to the plaintiffs but their households as well.

"Hospitals are supposed to be places where people come to get better, to get healthier. They're not supposed to be places that spread disease," Harlan said in a phone interview. "When we look at HCA and Riverside, they have taken actions or lack of actions that have spread the virus through the community and that is the impetus of the lawsuit and why we brought it under the public nuisance cause of action."

According to the complaint, workers including plaintiffs Ray Valdivia and Vanessa Mondragon brought repeated complaints to their respective supervisors regarding "insufficient PPE, a lack of contact tracing, pressure to ignore recommended workplace safety precautions, and the lack of prompt notice of exposure," according to the complaint.

Responding to allegations in a statement Thursday, Riverside Community Hospital said it has acted in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control guidelines and has implemented "testing of colleagues, universal masking and other safeguards."

"No one takes the health and safety of our workers more seriously than we do, and since day one, our top priority has been to protect them -- to keep them safe and keep them employed -- so they can best care for our patients," the statement reads. "Any suggestion otherwise ignores the extensive work, planning and training we have done to ensure the delivery of high-quality care during this pandemic. ... This lawsuit is an attempt for the union to gain publicity, and we will defend it vigorously."

Union President Dave Regan, said the conditions health care workers and their respective communities face are the direct result of policy decisions and leadership decisions that emanate from headquarters of the HCA in Nashville.

"As a result of the reckless conduct, HCA has created, in effect, a public nuisance because Covid is obviously transmitted outside of health care institutions directly and as a result our members are being exposed to it in the hospital. Their families, they're friends, their acquaintances, have now also been affected by the behavior of HCA."

While calls have been made for Gov. Gavin Newsom to institute some sort of liability protections for hospitals during the pandemic, Harlan said he does not expect any immunity-type defense to go very far since the suit is focused on well-established, public nuisance arguments used long before the pandemic hit.

"What I think HCA and Riverside will try to do, they will try to throw every argument against the wall and hope that something sticks and try to call foul and say we should be protected from these lawsuits for various reasons. I don't think any of those arguments will be successful," Harlan said. "In California, the governor issued an order around workers compensation, and the presumption that workers in certain workplaces they acquired COVID in. ... I imagine the employer here will try to raise some of those issues about three of the five plaintiffs, because three of the five are employees, but we haven't seen anything that would suggest that the workers compensation law preempts a public nuisance lawsuit."

The complaint includes claims of public nuisance, unfair and unlawful business practices, negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress and seeks declaratory judgment on the causes of action. Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West v. HCA Healthcare (Riverside Sup. Ct., filed Aug. 20, 2020)