Jury Award Upheld Against Doctor in Bullying Case
State Supreme Court rejects lower court's order for a new trial
By Jeff Swiatek
Indianapolis (IN) Star
April 9, 2008
The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed a jury award of $325,000 to a former St. Francis Hospital employee who accused a prominent heart surgeon of bullying him.
Joseph E. Doescher, a former heart-and-lung-machine operator, won his case against Dr. Daniel H. Raess. Doescher accused the doctor of yelling at him while on the job. The trial drew national attention as an example of workplace bullying. But the doctor appealed the case, and the Indiana Court of Appeals ordered a new civil trial in 2006.
The 4-1 decision Tuesday by the state's highest court overturned the appellate court's order to hold a new trial. The justices found none of Raess' five appeals claims was valid. They included the claims that testimony by a national expert on workplace bullying shouldn't have been allowed and that the jury award was excessive.
The 16-page Supreme Court decision amounts to a final legal win for Doescher, said one of his attorneys, Sandra Blevins.
"There is no new trial; it's over. This is the end," she said.
She said payment of the $325,000 to Doescher should occur shortly.
The appeals court had held that Marion Superior Court Judge Cale Bradford allowed testimony in the 2005 trial that unfairly prejudiced the jury against Raess.
The disputed testimony by Gary Namie, director of the Workplace Bullying Institute in Washington state, "allowed the jury to infer that Raess committed assault because that is what 'bullies' do," the appeals court said in its eight-page ruling.
Doescher claimed a workplace confrontation with Raess led to a severe case of depression and forced him to leave his job, which paid about $100,000 a year. He worked side-by-side with Raess during surgeries, running the heart-and-lung machines that keep patients alive.
In Tuesday's decision, the justices wrote that testimony indicated that Raess, angry at Doescher's complaints about him to the hospital administration, "aggressively and rapidly advanced on the plaintiff with clenched fists, piercing eyes, beet-red face, popping veins, and screaming and swearing at him. The plaintiff backed up against a wall and put his hands up, believing that the defendant was going to hit him, '[t]hat he was going to smack the s**t out of me or do something.' "
"Then the defendant suddenly stopped, turned, and stormed past the plaintiff and left the room, momentarily stopping to declare to the plaintiff, 'You're finished, you're history.' . . . There is substantial evidence or reasonable inferences to support the jury's conclusions that an assault occurred," the high court ruled.
The claim of workplace bullying generated much attention from the media and from professional publications such as American Medical News and HR Answers.
Doescher works now in customer service for a health insurer, Blevins said. Raess quit his medical practice and left St. Francis in 2006 to work for a medical device maker.
An attorney for Raess, Mary Watts, couldn't be reached for comment.
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