The Bronx hospital that let a woman take a stranger she thought was her brother off life support should not be held responsible for the mix-up because neither she nor her sibling was a patient there, lawyers for the facility argue in court papers.
Shirell Powell, 48, alleged in a lawsuit last month that St. Barnabas Hospital told her that her brother, Frederick Williams, had been admitted there in July 2018 after an apparent drug overdose.
Powell, of Crown Heights, sat vigil by her brain-dead “brother’s” hospital bed for nine days and eventually had him taken off life support, the lawsuit said.
But it turned out a man around the same age with a similar name and features, Freddy Clarence Williams, was the man in the hospital bed, and her brother had been in jail since earlier that month.
Hospital lawyer Barry Rothman said in a motion to dismiss the case filed Wednesday that the hospital can only be held responsible for emotional distress it inflicts on patients. Since neither Powell nor Williams were patients, St. Barnabas is off the hook and the lawsuit should be dismissed, Rothman wrote.
“An unconscious ‘John Doe’ was brought to The Hospital, which in good faith attempted to notify the family. Should liability be extended to The Hospital under search [sic] circumstances, the effect would be to discourage hospitals from making such efforts,” Rothman said in the papers.
Powell’s lawyer, Alexander Dudelson, told The Post, “St. Barnabas is asserting a weak public policy argument. If the hospital exercised the slightest amount of care, this devastating matter would have never occurred.”
Powell said she was “annoyed” by the motion.
“They are just trying to cop out. There is no way they are going to cop out. No way,” she said.
Powell had family travel to New York from the south once they decided to take her “brother” off life support on July 29, according to the court documents. Then in August, when she was making funeral arrangements, the Medical Examiner’s office notified her of the mix-up, the suit charges.
“I nearly fainted because I killed somebody that I didn’t even know. I gave consent,” Powell has said.