Friday, March 9, 2012 | 7:03 p.m.
Beyond the Sun
A nurse investigated in the death of an infant at Sunrise Hospital filed suit Friday claiming she was defamed, wrongfully fired and made a scapegoat for hospital administrators — whom she claims conducted a shoddy investigation.
The suit was filed by attorneys for Sharon Ochoa-Reyes, one of two nurses who were fired after Sunrise said 14 catheter lines had been disrupted in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
In one of those incidents, the July 2010 death of an infant was ruled a homicide by the Clark County coroner’s office.
However, no one has been charged in the baby’s death.
The Nevada State Board of Nursing initially suspended the licenses of both nurses. However, the board later reinstated their licenses when it found no wrongdoing on their part.
The nurses have insisted all along that the problem is linked to product malfunctions.
Sunrise has refused to rehire the nurses. A nurses union sued the hospital last month in a bid to gain a court order requiring the hospital to rehire one of the nurses, Jessica Rice, as ordered to do so by a federal mediator.
A Las Vegas attorney representing the hospital filed a response to that lawsuit March 1 saying, in part, that Rice’s claims may be barred ''to the extent that plaintiff engaged in unlawful or improper conduct during the course of her employment.''
A request for comment was placed Friday with Sunrise on the Ochoa-Reyes lawsuit, which was filed in Clark County District Court by attorneys at the law firm Bailus Cook & Kelesis Ltd.
The suit says problems with the catheters arose in late 2009.
The lines are used to deliver medication or nutrition to patients.
There were 14 failures of the lines, in which they became separated in two, interrupting the flow of fluids, the suit says.
Instead of focusing on defects with the lines themselves, the suit says, ''Sunrise negligently began a course of conduct designed to protect its own interests and deflect attention from its failure to investigate the true cause of the catheter failures, and place blame on long-term employee, Sharon Ochoa-Reyes, and another nurse in the unit, falsely suggesting that they intentionally severed catheters.''
The suit asserts counts of defamation, libel, slander, wrongful termination, negligence, conspiracy, racketeering, fraud, infliction of emotional distress and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage.
The economic advantage count claims Sunrise and administrators, because of their public statements, ''caused plaintiff to be virtually unemployable in her occupation.''
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, claims the defendants accused Ochoa-Reyes of ''varying atrocities from attempted murder to being an 'Angel of Death.' ''
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