In re P.W. v. Children's Hospital Colorado

Summary

The court held that a hospital caring for a known suicidal patient in its secure psychiatric unit could not assert comparative negligence or assumption of risk when the patient suffered the very self-harm the hospital undertook to prevent. The hospital's assumed duty to protect the patient subsumed the patient's own duty of self-care, making the patient's negligence and capacity for rational self-protection legally irrelevant under the undisputed facts. The court declined to review the discovery ruling because the hospital had not shown that ordinary appellate review would be inadequate.