A New Jersey Father Told Hospital Staff He Couldn’t Breathe, but a Nurse Allegedly Said He ‘Pretends To Be Sick.’ Minutes Later, He Collapsed
"It had to have been quite a flagrant violation."
Jerome White died after collapsing just outside a New Jersey emergency room where a nurse had allegedly dismissed his breathing problems. According to NJ.com, White had a long history of severe asthma and had already been treated once inside Cooper University Hospital in Camden before being discharged on the night of June 3, 2020.
Sheriff’s officers outside the hospital watched his condition worsen and twice approached staff about him, but were told he had already been treated and needed to leave. On the second approach, Officer Pierre Buchaillot told an on-duty nurse that White appeared to be struggling. “The nurse advised Officer Buchaillot that Mr. White comes here all the time and pretends to be sick,” the incident report states.
White collapsed moments later. Officers found his body had gone limp and his lips had turned blue, and by the time he was brought back inside on a stretcher, he had stopped breathing. He never recovered from the resulting brain damage and died at Cooper on June 19, 16 days after he first sought help.
An Expert Called the Settlement Uncommonly Large
White’s death certificate listed anoxic encephalopathy and cardiac arrest as the cause of death, alongside his longstanding asthma. His family later reached a previously undisclosed $15 million wrongful-death settlement, with Cooper paying $12 million and Camden County contributing $3 million, according to estate records. No lawsuit ever reached court, and the agreement included no admission of wrongdoing.
Sara Rosenbaum, professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University, told the outlet the settlement’s size stood out. “It strikes me as an uncommonly large settlement,” she said. “So the hospital’s behavior must have been reprehensible. It had to have been quite a flagrant violation.” Rosenbaum said the circumstances appeared to violate the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires hospitals to screen and stabilize anyone who arrives seeking emergency care, regardless of their history with the facility.
Violations can bring civil penalties exceeding $130,000 per incident and, in serious or repeated cases, exclusion from Medicare funding entirely. That federal claim likely explains why the payout reached the size it did. New Jersey’s Charitable Immunity Act caps damages against nonprofit hospitals organized exclusively for hospital purposes at just $250,000 for ordinary negligence, a limit that has applied to similar hospitals in past New Jersey cases.
An EMTALA claim, however, is a federal cause of action separate from that state-law cap, which is likely why a case built partly around it could result in a settlement many times larger than a standard negligence claim would typically allow. Camden County said its officers were investigated internally and cleared, with spokesman Dan Keashan telling the outlet, “The officers went and rendered aid and got Mr. White back into the E.D. That’s basically what the incident report says.”
Cooper University Health Care declined to discuss the case, with spokeswoman Wendy Marano citing the settlement’s confidentiality clause.
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