New Jersey judge dismisses two lawsuits against employers of

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A New Jersey state judge dismissed lawsuits yesterday against three hospitals and a nursing home that had employed a former nurse who has admitted killing as many as 40 patients. Superior Court Judge Rachel Davidson found that the institutions were not obligated to contact prospective future employers regarding what they knew or suspected about nurse Charles Cullen. She dismissed suits against Warren Hospital in Phillipsburg, St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, Morristown Memorial Hospital and Liberty Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Allentown, Pa. She did, however, leave open the possibility of the relatives of two victims amending the lawsuits to allege that the hospitals were asked about Charles Cullen and either gave false or incomplete information to prospective employers. “This case is a national disgrace,” said Anthony Macri, the attorney for two families who are suing eight hospitals or nursing homes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Four of those institutions did not move in court to have the suits dismissed on Tuesday. “This is a nurse who went to 10 hospitals in 10 years and murdered,” Macri said. “Many of these hospitals knew he had murdered.” But lawyers for the hospitals said they were not legally obligated to contact Cullen’s future employers, and were unsure how they would have done so had they been required to do it. “What do we do, take out an ad in the paper?” Murray Klein, the lawyer for Warren Hospital, said after the hearing. Cullen admitted killing 13 patients at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, where he worked in 2002 and 2003, by injecting them with digoxin, a heart drug. The hospital is facing several lawsuits stemming from the deaths, and it recently asked the New Jersey Supreme Court to rule that all of those cases be tried in Somerset County. A decision is expected soon. Cullen also has confessed to the murders of three other patients in New Jersey and one in Pennsylvania. Other institutions sued by Macri’s clients include Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington; Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa.; St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem, Pa., and Easton Hospital in Easton, Pa. The lawsuits that were dismissed yesterday were on behalf of two victims who died at Somerset Medical Center, Krishnakant Upadhyay, 70, who died in September 2003, and Frances Shipman, 81, who died in June 2003. Defense lawyers who attended yesterday’s hearing repeatedly said that Macri failed to state a cause of action for which relief could be granted by the courts, and the judge agreed. She did, however, allow him to consider amending his complaint to try to make the case that the hospitals were contacted for information on Cullen and either lied or gave incomplete information. In a written confession obtained by The Star-Ledger of Newark, Cullen said his own feelings of guilt and unworthiness drove him to kill, and also said he had tried to take his own life more than 20 times.