A lawsuit filed against city-owned Memorial Health System by a nurse who claimed she was demoted after complaining that a heart surgeon flung a piece of bloody human tissue at her has been dismissed.
But the nurse, Sonja Morris, has filed an appeal.
“Our attorney is confident, based on the facts of the case, that Memorial will prevail on the appeal as well,” Memorial spokesman Brian Newsome said today in an email.
In the lawsuit, Morris claimed that Dr. Bryan Mahan, chairman of cardiac and thoracic medicine at Memorial, threw a 4-by-6-inch piece of human tissue at her during an open-heart surgery in August 2008. Morris claimed she was constantly harassed by Mahan.
“Morris’s suit against Memorial was based on two allegations,” Newsome said in the email.
“She claimed she was sexually harassed by Dr. Mahan in a hostile work environment, and she also claimed that her First Amendment right to petition was violated after she was reassigned from the heart team to another surgery team. The judge dismissed both claims,” he said.
Mahan was in the news again this week when his name appeared at the top of the list of the highest-paid employees at Memorial.
Thanks for the update on that case. I was curious about what happened in the couple of years since the original story was released.
It appears that this case was dismissed on Feb. 25, 2010. Has the appeal been heard yet?