Comment on Judge dismisses lawsuit by pregnant worker stabbed at Maine psychiatric hospital

A federal court judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought against the state by a pregnant mental health worker who was repeatedly stabbed by a patient at the state’s Riverview Psychiatric Center. The worker, Jamie Hill-Spotswood, argued in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Bangor that less than a week before the attack on March 16, 2013, she told the assistant director of nursing at the Augusta hospital that she was 18 weeks pregnant and felt unsafe because there was no security on the floor where she worked. Judge George Singal rejected Hill-Spotswood’s claims that the state had failed to protect her, stating in his order dismissing the suit that her attacker, Mark Murphy, created the danger, not the state. “Mere awareness by the government of the danger posed by a private individual is not sufficient to amount to a due process violation,” Singal said in his 11-page order. The attack prompted state officials to bring in corrections officers to monitor patients, and triggered an audit that cost the state millions of dollars in federal funding after federal authorities objected to the new security measures. Hill-Spotswood said in the lawsuit, filed against Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew, that the floor was populated by patients known to be “very, very violent” and known to have threatened or attacked workers and patients many times. Her attorney, Michael Waxman, argued in the lawsuit filed last May 19 that the state did nothing after Hill-Spotswood told staffers at the Augusta hospital that she felt unsafe, and she was never informed that Murphy had a “prolific history of violence.” “So, predictably, when Mark Murphy, a known violent individual, decided to become violent yet again, DHHS provided the lamb for the slaughter, and enabled – by its inexcusable failure to protect employees from foreseeable and grave danger – Mr.