CHARLESTON – The state Supreme Court has dismissed Charleston Area Medical Center from a case regarding how it and a Mingo County funeral home allegedly mishandling the remains of a Wyoming County couple’s stillborn daughter.
The Justices, in a 3-2 opinion issued June 12, said plaintiffs Angela and Denny Seth Lester did not follow proper medical malpractice complaint filing guidelines. Justices John Hutchison and Bill Wooton dissented and filed their own opinions.
In the majority opinion, Justice Haley Bunn wrote that the Lesters did not comply with the pre-suit notice requirements of the Medical Professional Liability Act. Mingo Circuit Court Judge Miki Thompson had ruled that while CAMC is a medical provider, the stillborn fetus was not a patient, thus it wasn’t a case that fell under the MPLA. CAMC then appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing that Angela Lester was a patient. The Justices agreed with CAMC and remanded the case back to circuit court with instructions to enter an order dismissing the claims against CAMC.
Tish Chafin
| File photo
“Angela and Seth are very saddened by the court’s 3-2 decision regarding the terrible acts of Women and Children’s Hospital to the remains of their stillborn child,” attorney Tish Chafin told The West Virginia Record.
In his dissent, Hutchison calls the majority’s labeling of the mother as a patient an “absurdity.”
“The MPLA’s screening certificate of merit requirements provide that a plaintiff must secure a medical expert who ‘is engaged or qualified in a medical field in which the practitioner has experience and/or training in diagnosing or treating injuries or conditions similar to those of the patient,’” Hutchison wrote. “Common sense dictates that a practitioner in the field of obstetrics could not possibly offer any expertise as to whether CAMC’s employee acted negligently by placing the remains of a stillborn child in the back seat of a private vehicle among a pile of groceries and permitting the driver and her husband to then transport the remains away from the hospital premises.
“The reality is that CAMC’s alleged misconduct – having absolutely nothing to do with the provision of health care – is within the experience and judgment of the average juror. It is simply unimaginable that any specialized medical knowledge is required for a jury to understand the simple allegations of the plaintiffs’ amended complaint. Because I believe that the special protection afforded health care providers under the MPLA does not – and should not – extend to the alleged actions of CAMC in this case, I respectfully dissent.”
Wooton agreed with Hutchison.
“The negligent mishandling of a corpse is well-established cause of action that does not bear any of the hallmarks of medical professional liability such as to trigger the special requirements of the MPLA,” he wrote in his dissent. “Handling and transfer of postmortem remains, while deserving of professionalism and the utmost care, simply does not implicate the type of negligent ‘health care services’ the MPLA was designed to address.
“Whether petitioner (CAMC) was negligent in its handling A.C.L.’s fetal remains by allowing the remains to be placed, unprotected, in a vehicle is a matter that requires no expert testimony. It requires only the judgment of a lay person, using his or her ordinary understanding of the concept of ‘reasonable care.’
“It is, by any measure, a tragic, yet ‘ordinary’ tort claim sounding in simple negligence which merely happens to involve a health care provider in addition to a funeral home. In terms of the claim of negligent mishandling, the allegations against both CAMC and the funeral home are effectively the same, i.e. the negligent facilitation of and transport of the unprotected remains in a vehicle containing both items which threatened the safety of the remains and an unauthorized individual. Yet, the majority has determined as to CAMC alone, the claim necessitates the extensive, specialized handling required under the MPLA.”
According to the original complaint, the Lesters are the biological parents of A.C.L., who died stillborn of natural causes on May 17, 2018, at CAMC Women’s and Children’s Hospital. The couple hired Mounts to handle funeral arrangements and final disposition of the infant’s body. Denny Seth Lester signed the authorization releasing the body to Mounts on May 21.
That same day, according to the complaint, Cline traveled to Charleston in her personal vehicle, a Ford Fusion, to take her husband Jeff Cline to a doctor’s appointment and to run errands. She picked up the body at 4 p.m.
On January 29, 2020, Jeff Cline posted a video on several social media outlets describing the process of transporting and embalming the plaintiffs’ infant son’s body and wrongfully suggesting the corpse was the result of Angela Lester terminating the pregnancy.
“The Cline video was shared numerous times and was viewed by a large number of people in the plaintiffs’ community throughout both Mingo County and Southern West Virginia,” the complaint states. “Plaintiffs were unaware that defendant Cline had transported their infant’s body in her private vehicle and were likewise unaware that defendant Cline’s husband was in the car during the transport to defendant Mounts Funeral Home until they were made aware of the Cline video on or about February 1, 2020.
“The mishandling of their infant son’s body by the defendants and the Cline video, made possible by the defendants’ reckless behavior, caused significant mental anguish, pain and suffering to your plaintiffs as they were forced to relive the death of their infant son in a very public manner.”
The Lesters accuse the defendants of negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress, negligent mishandling of a corpse and negligent supervision.
They seek joint and several compensatory damages, punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, court costs, attorney fees and other relief.
In their separate answers to the complaint, both Mounts and Cline deny the allegations and seek to have the case dismissed.
Jeff Cline is a former Gilbert police officer who also ran for Mingo County Sheriff. In 2013, he was given federal immunity from potential crimes for testimony regarding former Mingo Circuit Judge Michael Thornsbury, who was charged with conspiracy to violate the constitutional rights of his former secretary’s husband. Thornsbury was sentenced in 2014 to more than four years in federal prison.
Jeff Cline was mentioned in the federal indictment of Thornsbury, who asked Cline to plant a metal box containing illegal drugs on the man’s car. But Cline apparently did not plant the drugs.
The Lesters are represented by Tish and Truman Chafin of The Chafin Law Firm in Williamson as well as Christian R. Harris of Williamson. Mounts is represented by George Halkias of the Law Office of Asad U. Khan in Charleston, and Cline is represented by David F. Nelson of Hendrickson & Long in Charleston.
West Virginia Supreme Court case number 22-0439 (Mingo Circuit Court case number 21-C-75)