In Quigley v. Pottstown Hospital, LLC, the Superior Court reversed the transfer of a case from Philadelphia to Montgomery County where the Plaintiff sought to hold the hospital liable for a patient’s sexual assault. The Court held that the case should not have been transferred to Montgomery County because the hospital’s parent company and co-defendant regularly conducts business in Philadelphia County through its subsidiaries.
Plaintiff alleged that Montgomery County-based Pottstown Hospital and its parent company Tower Health failed to prevent an elderly dementia patient from being sexually assaulted by an unknown perpetrator. Following four days of inpatient treatment at Pottstown in late 2020, Quigley was found by a nursing home’s routine physical exam to have injuries consistent with sexual assault.
The Philadelphia County trial court transferred the case to Montgomery County after the defendants argued that the assault took place in that county and that Tower Health was based in Berks County. The plaintiff did not claim that the venue was proper in Philadelphia because Pottstown Hospital regularly conducted business there. Rather, their venue claim was based on the fact that Tower Health, Pottstown’s parent company, regularly conducts business in Philadelphia.
The Superior Court found Tower Health had the requisite quality and quantity of contacts with Philadelphia County where it: (1) Wholly owned and partially owned multiple Philadelphia properties, an Acute-Care Hospital, two Urgent Care Facilities and a Children’s Hospital; (2) Is the managing partner of an LLC that owns a Philadelphia children’s hospital; (3) Conducts medical billing of all subsidiary hospitals through a Philadelphia post office box; (4) Actively asserts control and authority over its subsidiaries by procuring insurance policies, providing them general counsel, conducting hospital CEO performance reviews and disciplinary actions, ratifying the hospital’s Board of Directors, and implementing Acute Care Hospital federal mandates.
See the full opinion here.