Alleged victims and their surviving relatives filed three new civil lawsuits against Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center and former nurse Dani Marie Schofield last week, with more expected soon, according to attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
The Jackson County District Attorney’s Office charged Schofield with 44 counts of second-degree assault last year. Authorities accuse her of swapping patients’ liquid fentanyl with non-sterile tap water, causing infections in dozens of patients. Sixteen of those alleged victims died.
The latest complaints names James Geear, Jill Baylor and Kevin Jay Hughes as being under the care of Asante and Schofield when they developed bacterial infections. Hughes died due to his infection, according to the complaint filed by his estate. The lawsuits seek from $6 million to over $9 million in damages.
Geear was not named as a victim in the criminal indictment.
Judges have issued stays, or pauses, to similar civil lawsuits until after Schofield’s criminal trial, arguing that requiring the nurse to testify violates her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
David Linthorst with the Medford law firm Andersen & Linthorst is representing the plaintiffs in the latest civil complaints. He said he would argue against a delay.
“We don't think that stay should apply to all information that's applicable to this situation, particularly what happened at Asante,” Linthorst said. “Who dropped the ball?”
He said his firm, which will file four more lawsuits in the coming weeks, wants to know what protocols were followed at Asante during the period of patient infections.
“It doesn't make any sense that we have to wait years for the criminal case to resolve, just to get simple information, like what was going on at Asante,” attorney Marco Boccato said.
So far, the hospital could face over $477 million in damages from civil complaints. Not all of those lawsuits name Schofield, who is out on a $4 million bail.
Schofield’s first pre-trial criminal hearing is scheduled for April 28. Her defense has delayed that hearing three times before.
Linthorst said the statute of limitations to file civil lawsuits could soon run out for many of the alleged victims.
“We are probably about two to three years away from a lot of Ms. Scofield's conduct as set forth in the indictment,” Linthorst said. “So we're at a point where… we have to do something.”
