A staffing agency is not liable for an employee it had placed who poisoned a co-worker because the employee acted “outside the course and scope of her employment,” says a California state appeals court.

San Diego-based AMN Healthcare Inc., which does business as Nursefinders, is a staffing company that had placed Theresa Drummond as a medical assistant at a Kaiser Permanente facility, according to Friday's ruling by the California Court of Appeal for the 4th District in San Diego Sara Montague et al. v. AMN Healthcare Inc.

Ms. Drummond had disagreements with Ms. Montague, another medical assistant, over how rooms were to be stocked and misplaced lab slips, according to the ruling.

A few weeks later, Ms. Montague left her water bottle at work. She later drank from the bottle, and her tongue and throat started to burn and she vomited, according to the ruling. Ms. Drummond later admitted she had poured carbolic acid into the water bottle, according to the ruling.

Ms. Montague and her husband sued Nursefinders in the Superior Court of San Diego County for several causes of action, including negligence, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent training.

The appellate court upheld a ruling by the trial court in San Diego granting AMN summary judgment dismissing the case. “Although an employee's willful, malicious and even criminal torts may fall within the scope of employment, 'an employer is not strictly labile for all actions of its employees during working hours,'” said the appellate court in quoting an earlier ruling.

%%BREAK%%

“Even assuming the evidence supports an inference that the poisoning arose out of a work-related dispute that occurred weeks earlier, the dispute concerned Drummond and Montague's mutual employment with Kaiser, not Nursefinders,” said the ruling.

“The acts, construed most favorably for Montague, do not support liability against Nursefinders because Drummond's poisoning of Montague was highly unusual and startling,” the ruling continued.

The appellate court also ruled Nursefinders was not liable for negligently training Ms. Drummond.

“Montague's argument appears to be that because Nursefinders trained Drummond on avoiding workplace violence and the incident occurred, this evidence supports an inference that Nursefinders must have breached its duty to train Drummond in avoiding workplace violence and this breach caused her injuries.”

“We reject the contention as the suggested inferences are based on speculation and not reasonably deducible from the evidence,” said a three-judge appellate panel in unanimously dismissing the case.